Soldier Poet

Front Line Stuff by Claggett Wilson, Smithsonian Museum

The largest battle in the history of the American army is the Meuse-Argonne, yet few Americans know of the offensive that lasted from September 26 to November 11, 1918.  Over 1.2 million U.S. doughboys were involved; 26,277 men were killed, and an additional 95,786 were wounded. In To Conquer Hell, historian Edward G. Lengel writes,

No single battle in American military history, before or since, even approaches the Meuse-Argonne in size and cost, and it was without question the country’s most critical military contribution to the Allied Cause in the First World War. And yet, within a few years of its end, nobody seemed to realize that it had taken place.”*

Hervey Allen, 1917

Hervey Allen, a National Guard soldier from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, never made it to the Argonne forest. Gassed, burned, wounded by shrapnel, and suffering the effects of shell shock from the attack at Fismette, he was evacuated to a military hospital in August of 1918.  Shortly before his part in the war ended, however, Allen met up at the front with his close friend Francis (Frank) Hogan, a fellow Pittsburgher and aspiring poet. Allen and Hogan “peered into each other’s faces in the dark and sat down on a stone together and had a close talk.” The two soldiers promised to try to meet again. Allen remembers, “I had an impulse to take Frank with me, but I only shook hands with him….I never saw him again.  He was a brilliant and promising poet. He was killed in the Argonne in October a few days before the armistice.”**

Liberty Bond poster
Howard Chandler Christy

Corporal Francis Fowler Hogan was 21 when he died.

Soldier-Poet

To Francis Fowler Hogan

I think at first like us he did not see

The goal to which the screaming eagles flew;

For romance lured him, France, and chivalry;

But Oh! Before the end he knew, he knew!

And gave his first full love to Liberty,

And met her face to face one lurid night

While the guns boomed their shuddering minstrelsy

And all the Argonne glowed with demon light.

And Liberty herself came through the wood,

And with her dear, boy lover kept the tryst;

Clasped in her grand, Greek arms he understood

Whose were the fatal lips that he had kissed –

Lips that the soul of Youth has loved from old –

Hot lips of Liberty that kiss men cold.

            —Hervey Allen

What was the goal toward which the screaming eagles flew that Frank Hogan was unable to see at the start? The brutal death that awaited him and so many soldiers of the Great War.  Lured by the promise of chivalrous adventure, men soon came to know intimately the shuddering music of artillery fire that blasted them into mist. 

Allen’s poem in memory of Hogan mixes romantic images of war with depictions of horror: shells drop with the sound of medieval minstrel song, while a soldier’s night-time tryst with his first love, Liberty, is lit by the lurid demon light of fire and explosives. American Revolutionary War hero Patrick Henry cried, “Give me Liberty or give me Death”; soldiers of the First World War learned that the price for loving Liberty often was death.  Hers are the hot lips that “kiss men cold.”

Francis Fowler Hogan

In an earlier, longer draft of “Soldier Poet,” Allen mourns the wasted potential of his friend’s early death and asks,

Where is my youth-crowned friend who went to war,

With his strong body and a golden smile?

Francis Hogan’s own poem “Fulfilled,” written while he was fighting in France, answers,

Think not that my life has been futile,

Nor grieve for an unsaid word,

For all that my lips might never sing

My singing heart has heard….

I have made a song of the crescent moon

And a poem of only a smile…

Frank’s mother had his body returned to the United States after the war ended; he was reburied on August 13, 1921 in Pittsburgh’s Homewood Cemetery.***  

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*Edward G. Lengel, To Conquer Hell, Henry Holt, 2008, p. 4.

**Hervey Allen, Toward the Flame, Farrar & Rinehart, 1934, pp. 76-77.
***Thanks to Jennie Benford, Director of Programming for Homewood Cemetery, without whom I would not have known of these men and their poetry. 

Camouflage

Captured Turkish sniper

Visiting the Western Front in July of 1917, the British monarch King George V toured a camouflage unit in Belgium.  A special correspondent for the Times described the workshop as “a magician’s palace in a Belgium farm, where nothing is as it seems…. where bushes are men and things dissolve when you look at them and the earth collapses… It is the grown-up home of make-believe.”*

Howitzer 1917 under netting,  James Hurley
Australian War Memorial EO1891 

Armies had previously used tactics to hide themselves from the enemy, but the conditions of the First World War made concealment more necessary than ever.  Enemy trenches were often only yards apart, while planes, balloons, and dirigibles flew overhead to photograph positions and gather intelligence.

In 1915, the French were the first to establish a military camouflage unit; their section’s badge featured a silver chameleon.**  Other armies quickly followed suit.  The military use of the word camouflage entered English during the Great War, its origins in the French word camoufler (to make up for the stage).***  Theatrical set designers, sculptors, painters, and other artists served in these units. Their job was not only to conceal, but to deceive. 

Paper mâché dummy heads were used to draw fire and expose the position of enemy snipers; fake trees fashioned from bullet-proof steel and encased in hammered iron plates served as observation posts in No Man’s Land (the simulated bodies of dead horses and human corpses served the same function), while tanks and ships were painted in bold, abstract designs based upon the principles of Cubist art, breaking up silhouettes and confusing observers’ sense of perspective.

USS Leviathan escorted by USS Allen
by Burnell Poole 1918

 One merchant ship captain who objected to the “vivid painting of his vessel” received the following response from a camouflage officer:

Dear Sir,-- The object of camouflage is not, as you suggest, to turn your ship into an imitation of a West African parrot, a rainbow in a naval pantomime, or a gay woman.  The object of camouflage is rather to give the impression that your head is where your stern is.†

Camouflage officers were not the only soldiers who sought to give false impressions, nor were enemy soldiers the only ones deceived.   An unsigned poem titled simply “Camouflage” appeared in the June 28, 1918 edition of the American military newspaper, The Stars and Stripes. 

Camouflage

They tell us tales of camouflage,

The art of hiding things;

Of painted forts and bowered guns

Invisible to wings.

Well, it’s nothing new to us.

To us, the rank and file;

We understand this camouflage

—We left home with a smile.

Erecting the First Camouflage Tree, Solomon J Solomon
© IWM ART 6476 (1)

We saw the painted battleships

And earthen-colored trains,

And planes the hue of leaden skies,

And canvas-hidden lanes.

Well, we used the magic art

That day of anxious fears;

We understand this camouflage

—We laughed away your tears.

They say that scientific men

And artists of renown

Debated long on camouflage

Before they got it down.

Well, it came right off to us,

We didn’t have to learn;

We understand this camouflage,

—We said we’d soon return.

We understand this camouflage,

The art of hiding things;

It’s what’s behind a soldier’s jokes

And all the songs he sings.

Yes, it’s nothing new to us,

To us, the rank and file;

We understand this camouflage,

—We left home with a smile.

Soldiers frequently disguised the ugly realities of war when communicating with loved ones they had left behind.  Men omitted details, obscured the dangers of battle, and camouflaged the truth when writing home to friends and family.  

From his position in front line trenches training with the British in 1918, Private Ollie Hankins wrote home to his father in Richmond, Virginia:

Hello Pop! Guess you thought it was about time I was writing. I am feeling exubrious at present and hope this will find you all well.  This is the 4^th of July and we have just finished a lovely dinner. We had real dishes to eat out of & sat at a table in real chairs.  Just think of it! I haven’t heard a word from you all yet, but you need not feel bad about that as there is a reason for my mail being delayed at present, and I expect to get it very soon. We have holiday today and are endeavoring to make the most of it.

Six months later just after the Armistice, Ollie Hankins sent another letter home that revealed what had actually happened that Independence Day:

Dear Papa, I know that my being over here has caused you a lot of worry, but I hope that from now on you will not worry any more about me…. My letter to you all dated July 4^th was written just a few yards behind the front line trench and large shells were bursting close by while we ate that 4^th of July dinner that I told you about. While on this front I got caught in a barrage, which is not the pleasantest thing in the world to get caught in.  Also had some real use for my gas mask on this front and went to sleep in the blooming thing on several occasions….††

When the unsigned poem was reprinted in the 1920 Yearbook of Newspaper Poetry, it was retitled to reflect a truth countless soldiers in the rank and file had learned: “We Understand Camouflage.”   

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*Special correspondent to the Times, quoted in Nicholas Rankin’s A Genius for Deception, Oxford University Press, 2009, p. 141.

**Rankin, A Genius for Deception, p. 25.  The French society portrait painter Lucien-Victor de Scévola is often credited with devising the first modern camouflage; in September of 1914, he used painted canvas to disguise the position of a French artillery battery (Rankin, p. 24).

***Spencer C. Tucker, editor, The European Powers in the First World War: An Encyclopedia, Routledge, 1996, p 160.

†Rankin, A Genius for Deception, p. 131.

††Private C.O. Hankins, “War Letters, Diaries, and Incidents.” Library of Virginia Archives.

Ballad of Bethlehem Steel

Bethlehem Steel, by Aaron Harry Gorson

“War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.”

                                                            —Smedley D. Butler, War is a Racket (1935)*

The costs of the Great War were staggering. An estimated 41 million people were wounded or lost their lives, and from 1914 – 1918, the Allied and Central Powers poured over 185 billion dollars into waging war.  Adjusted for inflation, the amount today would exceed 4.3 trillion dollars.** 

Before the United States became involved in the global conflict, many Americans wanted nothing to do with the war and hoped to remain neutral.  Others, however, seized war-time opportunities to aggressively pursue profits.  In 1916, at a Washington, D.C. mass meeting of protest against the war, Grace Isabel Colbron gave a public reading of her poem “The Ballad of Bethlehem Steel.”***

The Ballad of Bethlehem Steel or “The Need For Preparedness”

                                    A Tale of the Ticker

A fort is taken, the papers say,

Five thousand dead in the murderous deal.

A victory? No, just another grim day.

            But—up to five hundred goes Bethlehem Steel.

The Masses, July 1916
Cartoon depicting Uncle Sam as war profiteer

A whisper, a rumor, one knows not where—

A sigh, a prayer from a torn heart rent—

A murmur of Peace on the death-laden air—

            But—Bethlehem Steel drops thirty per cent.

“We’ll fight to the death” the diplomats cry.

“We’ll fight to the death,” sigh the weary men.

As the battle roars to the shuddering sky—

            And Bethlehem Steel has a rise of ten.

What matters the loss of a million men?

What matters the waste of blossoming lands?

The children’s cry or the women’s pain?

            If—Bethlehem Steel at six hundred stands?

And so we must join in the slaughter-mill,

We must arm ourselves for a senseless hate,

We must waste our youths in the murder drill—

            That Bethlehem Steel may hold its state.†

                                    —Grace Isabel Colbron

1917 poster

Millions of young men are slaughtered; women and children suffer and die; towns and fields are bombed to barren wastelands, yet each stanza of the poem ends by confidently proclaiming the economic prospects of the Bethlehem Steel Corporation.

The upbeat rhythm and rhymes of the poem mimic the callously optimistic mood of those who profited from the war.  Celebrating those profits in May of 1916, Charles Schwab, president of Bethlehem Steel, addressed the executives of the American Iron and Steel Institute: “Boys, we are in a period of great prosperity. I wonder if any of us ever expected, anticipated or dreamed that we should ever see any such state of affairs as we see today….Boys, may this prosperity continue.”††

Just how prosperous was Bethlehem Steel? In the months before war was declared in Europe, the company struggled, operating at only 60% capacity and reducing workers’ hours. But after securing military contracts from Russia, Britain and France, Bethlehem Steel emerged as the leading supplier of Allied ships, munitions, and ordnance. By end of 1917, “orders on hand at Bethlehem Steel were twenty times as great as at the end of 1913,” and stock prices had risen from $30 to $600 a share.°

Charges of war profiteering were not unique to America. Companies in nearly every industrialized country sought to benefit from the war: Krupps (Germany) Renault (France), and Vickers (Britain) are some of the better-known examples. The war-time ideal of sacrifice was challenged when not everyone seemed to accept an equal share of the sacrifice. 

In 1935, fearing the prospect of yet another world war, Smedley Butler spoke out against the capitalist motives that might support such a war.  A retired Major General with the U.S. Marines, Butler condemned war profiteers in his book War is a Racket:

Cartoon appearing in The Masses, Sept 1915

“At least 21,000 new millionaires and billionaires were made in the United States during the World War. That many admitted their huge blood gains in their income tax returns. How many other war millionaires falsified their tax returns no one knows.

How many of these war millionaires shouldered a rifle? How many of them dug a trench? How many of them knew what it meant to go hungry in a rat-infested dug-out? How many of them spent sleepless, frightened nights, ducking shells and shrapnel and machine gun bullets? How many of them parried the bayonet thrust of an enemy? How many of them were wounded or killed in battle?”

Butler concluded, “Beautiful ideals were painted for our boys who were sent out to die. This was the ‘war to end wars.’ This was the ‘war to make the world safe for democracy.’ No one told them that dollars and cents were the real reason. No one mentioned to them, as they marched away, that their going and their dying would mean huge war profits.”°°

Bethlehem Steel filed for bankruptcy in 2001.    

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* Smedley D. Butler, War is a Racket, Round Table Press, 1935, p. 1.

**“World War I casualties,” Wikipedia and “Financial Cost of the First World War,” Spartacus Educational.

***“To Read Original Poem: Miss Colbron Writes Ballad for Meeting Against Preparedness.” Washington Evening Star, 29 Jan. 1916, p. 10.  Colbron was a translator, author, and activist in both the pacifist and suffragist movements. A tribute written after her death in 1943 described her as “a social idealist to the depths of her soul, she was ready at any time to give of her best for any worthwhile project for social reform” (W.L, “In Memoriam: Grace Isabel Colbron. The American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Vol. 3, No. 1, Oct. 1943, p. 114).

†First published in The Public: A Journal of Democracy (10 Dec. 1915), the version included in this post appeared in Seamen’s Journal, Vol. 29, 22 Dec. 1916, p. 11.  Punctuation varies among published editions of the poem; in the Presbyterian Survey (Oct. 1916), the last word of the poem reads “rate”; other versions read “state.”

††Kenneth Warren, Bethlehem Steel: Builder and Arsenal of America, University of Pittsburgh, 2008,      p. 105.

°Warren, Bethlehem Steel, pp. 103-106.

°°Smedley D. Butler, War is a Racket, pp. 2, 33.