Poems in their pockets

There’s a holiday for everything: November 27th is Bavarian Cream Pie Day and May 4th marks both Beer Pong Day and International Respect for Chickens Day. And every April, the US celebrates National Poetry Month, with one day set aside as “Poem in your Pocket Day.” According to the National Academy of Poets, it’s a day that encourages everyone to select a poem, carry it, and share it with others.

But what of poems found in the pockets of the dead? They echo like last words, held close by those who wrote them or loved them.

 

Frank Hurley, Dawn of Passchendaele
State Library New South Wales

Heaven

(Found in his pocket after death.)

Suddenly one day

The last ill shall fall away;

The last little beastliness that is in our blood

Shall drop from us as the sheath drops from the bud,

And the great spirit of man shall struggle through,

And spread huge branches underneath the blue.

In any mirror, be it bright or dim,

Man will see God staring back at him.

            —T.P. Cameron Wilson

T.P. Cameron Wilson was killed in the First World War on March 23, 1918. The introduction to his posthumously published book of poems, Magpies in Picardy, relates that he was “extremely shy about his verse, and, unlike most youthful poets, was always disinclined to let it be seen, or discussed, by his friends.” Before joining the British Army, Wilson had been a schoolteacher in rural Derbyshire. In a letter dated May of 1916, he wrote,

Do teach your dear kids the horror of responsibility which rests on the war-maker … We’ve been wrong in the past. We have taught schoolboys “war” as a romantic subject … And everyone has grown up soaked in the poetry of war—which exists, because there is poetry in everything, but which is only a tiny part of the great dirty tragedy … All those picturesque phrases of war writers … are dangerous because they show nothing of the individual horror, nothing of the fine personalities smashed suddenly into red beastliness, nothing of the sick fear that is tearing at the hearts of brave boys who ought to be laughing at home.*

T.P.C. Wilson

And in his war-time notebook of “waste paper philosophy,” Wilson wrote a reflection on prayer:

When you pray I dare advise you break away from arranged titles, such as the Church has hung round the neck of its God … I have prayed to Him as the Great Calm Spirit, as Father, as King, as Friend, and all the titles mean nothing, and fluttered like dead leaves on the moving stream of love … Once as I walked along a road I spoke to Him as the Splendid Friend, and saw the huge sea, green and silent against the clouds, and near me the laughing pines, and very far away a sail like a speck of foam but which was a great ship, full of men. And I knew I was a fool, and could not call Him anything, but said, “Make me big, and less a fool,” and then I ran, and met my friends and linked an arm through the warm arm of one and sang a silly song.**

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*T.P. Cameron Wilson from War Letters of Fallen Englishmen, E.P. Dutton, 1930, pp. 299-300.

** T.P. Cameron Wilson, Waste paper philosophy, to which has been added Magpies in Picardy, George H. Doran, 1920, p. 31.

What did we know of summer?

A Howitzer in Action, William Orpen
© IWM (Art.IWM ART 2957)

A wall of sound. A deafening roar. A ceaseless rain of shells. These were soldiers' impressions as they described one of the greatest artillery actions the world had ever seen, the British bombardment that preceded the July 1^st 1916 attack at the Somme. “The din of hundreds of shells whizzing over our heads was like several ghost-like express trains hurtling through the sky,” said Corporal George Ashurt of the Lancashire Fusiliers.

The shelling began on June 24^th and could be heard over 240 miles away in London. For the next six days, more than 1500 heavy guns, often spaced at intervals of less than 30 yards, fired over 1,500,000 artillery and gas shells at German positions. British General Sir Henry Rawlinson is reported to have said, “nothing could exist at the conclusion of the bombardment in the area covered by it.”

Rawlinson was quite wrong about the bombardment’s effectiveness at eliminating enemy opposition. British soldiers attacked the German lines on July 1, 1916 , and 20,000 British men were killed, most dying in the first hours of the attack. While bombardments did not kill every man in the trenches, they were a horrific torture to endure. In a letter dated April of 1916, British soldier-poet T.P. Cameron Wilson wrote, “a real bombardment, where the sky is one screaming sheet of metal, is hell indescribable.”  His poem “During the Bombardment,” attempts to communicate the experience. 

During the Bombardment

What did we know of birds?

A Crump, H.S. Williamson

Though the wet woods rang with their blessing,

And the trees were awake and aware with wings,

And the little secrets of mirth, that have no words,

Made even the brambles chuckle, like baby things

Who find their toes too funny for any expressing.  

What did we know of flowers? 

Though the fields were gay with their flaming

Poppies, like joy itself, burning the young green maize,

And spreading their crinkled petals after the showers — 

Cornflower vieing with mustard; and all the three of them shaming

The tired old world with its careful browns and greys.  

What did we know of summer,

The larks, and the dusty clover,

And the little furry things that were busy and starry-eyed?

Each of us wore his brave disguise, like a mummer,

Hoping that no one saw, when the shells came over,

The little boy who was funking — somewhere inside!
     —Theodore Percival Cameron Wilson

The roar and reverberations of an artillery bombardment consume the soldiers who must endure it. During the crash of exploding shells, men become oblivious to the sights and sounds of the world around them, blind to the fields of poppies and cornflowers, deaf to the sounds of birds and wind and woods. 

How loud is a bombardment that can be heard over 200 miles away? First World War bombardments were estimated to reach noise levels of at least 140 decibels, louder than a jackhammer at 50 feet (95 dB), louder than a power mower at 3 feet (107 dB), louder than sandblasting or a rock concert (115 dBs), and well past the point of pain that begins at 125 dBs. Even with hearing protection (which was not issued to men at the Front), 140 decibels is the loudest recommended noise exposure, and short-term exposure at this level is likely to result in permanent damage. 

An experience of this kind alters reality: the poem asks, what did we know of birds, of flowers, of summer? Only the rain of shells and the engulfing noise are real: even a sense of time and of the season are lost in the barrage of death.

Most terrifying of all, the men lose themselves. While their outward appearance remains that of men under fire, they know that this is only a disguise.  Like actors in a drama gone horribly wrong, the soldiers feel themselves to be no more than small boys "funking" — overwhelmed by fear, paralyzed, unable to do what is demanded of them. 

Recent research reported in the New York Times on Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (known during World War I as “shell shock”) has revealed startling changes in the brains of those who have survived blast sites. The researchers have concluded, “modern warfare destroys the brain.” 

It is nearly impossible to imagine what men experienced and endured in the trenches of the First World War.  In April of 1916, T.P Cameron Wilson wrote,

“War is about the most unclean thing on earth. There are certain big clean virtues about it – comradeship and a whittling away of non-essentials, and sheer stark triumphs of spirit over shrinking nerves, but it’s the calculated death, the deliberate tearing of young bodies – if you’ve once seen a bright-eyed fellow suddenly turned to a goggling idiot, with his own brains trickling down into his eyes from under his cap – as I’ve done, you’re either a peace-maker or a degenerate.”

T.P. Cameron Wilson did not live to see the peace; he was killed in the German spring offensive of 1918, his body never found.     

T.P. Cameron Wilson

Ancient alchemy

TP Cameron Wilson

Theodore Percival Cameron Wilson, who preferred to be called “Jim,” was a writer, teacher, and son of a clergyman from rural England.  He volunteered for the British Army in August of 1914 and was later commissioned an officer with the 10th Battalion Sherwood Foresters.

After eighteen months as a soldier, in March of 1916, he wrote to his mother, “Out here you must trust yourself to a bigger Power and leave it at that.  You can’t face death....There’s no facing it.  It’s everywhere.  You have to walk through it, and under it and over it and past it.  Without the sense of God taking up the souls out of those poor torn bodies – even though they’ve died cursing Him – I think one would go mad.”

In June of 1916, he wrote the poem “The Soldier.”

“The Soldier”

He laughed.  His blue eyes sought the morning,
Found the unceasing song of the lark
In a brown twinkle of wings, far out.
Great clouds, like galleons, sailed the distance.
The young spring day had slipped the cloak of dark
And stood up straight and naked with a shout.
Through the green wheat, like laughing schoolboys,
Tumbled the yellow mustard flowers, uncheck'd.
The wet earth reeked and smoked in the sun . . .
He thought of the waking farm in England.
The deep thatch of the roof — all shadow-fleck 'd —
The clank of pails at the pump . . . the day begun.
"After the war . . . " he thought. His heart beat faster
With a new love for things familiar and plain.
The Spring leaned down and whispered to him low
Of a slim, brown-throated woman he had kissed . . .
He saw, in sons that were himself again,
The only immortality that man may know.

And then a sound grew out of the morning,
And a shell came, moving a destined way,
Thin and swift and lustful, making its moan.
A moment his brave white body knew the Spring,
The next, it lay
In a red ruin of blood and guts and bone.
.   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .  .   .   .   .
Oh ! nothing was tortured there ! Nothing could know
How death blasphemed all men and their high birth
With his obscenities. Already moved,
Within those shattered tissues, that dim force,
Which is the ancient alchemy of Earth,
Changing him to the very flowers he loved.
.   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .  .   .   .   .
"Nothing was tortured there!" Oh, pretty thought!
When God Himself might well bow down His head
And hide His haunted eyes before the dead.
--T.P. Cameron Wilson



“He laughed” – this is a war poem that begins with a laugh, and not an ironic one.  The opening lines exult in the sheer joy of a spring morning and “a new love for things familiar and plain.” Boisterous and joyful, the day is likened to a naked nature worshipper; the mustard flowers cavort like laughing schoolboys; a lark sings in the distance, and clouds move across the sky like proud sailing ships.

The wonders of the dawn remind the soldier of early mornings enjoyed on his farm at home and dare him to hope for a time after the war, for his return to the English countryside, for a wife and sons with whom to share the future.

But in a moment, all is utterly changed.  An enemy’s shell, its sound obscenely rising above the morning’s birdsong, transforms the brave white body into “a red ruin.”  Death itself is described as blasphemous and obscene, while the “ancient alchemy of Earth” changes what is left of the young soldier’s body to “the very flowers he loved.”

Twice, the poem repeats “Nothing was tortured there” as a kind of incantation that seeks desperately to assure witnesses, survivors, loved ones at home, and perhaps God Himself that it was a quick and painless death.  But it is meager comfort: even God’s eyes are haunted by the scenes of carnage and needless death that were commonplace during the First World War.

In spring of 1916, Wilson he sent a letter to a friend in England, urging, “Do teach your dear kids the horror of responsibility which rests on the war-maker.  I want so much to get at children about it.  We’ve been wrong in the past.  We have taught schoolboys ‘war’ as a romantic subject…And everyone has grown up soaked in the poetry of war – which exists, because there is poetry in everything, but which is only a tiny part of the great dirty tragedy.  All those picturesque phrases of war writers – such as ‘he flung the remnants of his Guard against the enemy,’ ‘a magnificent charge won the day and the victorious troops, etc. etc.,’ are dangerous because they show nothing of the individual horror, nothing of the fine personalities smashed suddenly into red beastliness, nothing of the sick fear that is tearing at the hearts of brave boys who ought to be laughing at home – a thing infinitely more terrible than physical agony.”

Like so many others and like the soldier of whom he wrote, T.P. Cameron Wilson did not return home from the war.  He was killed on March 22, 1918 during the German Spring Offensive; his body was never found.

In the introduction to Wilson’s posthumously published book of poems, Magpies in Picardy, Harold Monro wrote that Wilson was “extremely shy about his verse, and unlike most youthful poets, was always disinclined to let it be seen, or discussed by his friends….The question whether the poems which follow are, or are not, important contributions to the literature of our time will be decided by their readers. As the expression of a personality, they are, at any rate, remarkable.”

As we commemorate the centenary of the First World War, new readers can determine for themselves the value and merits of this lost voice of the war.