Pershing at the Front

General "Black Jack" Pershing, commander of the AEF

In 1937, The Saturday Evening Post published a history that noted the magazines most popular poems:

Of the three poems most often asked for, two are serious, Alfred Noyes’ “A Victory Dance” and Arthur Guiterman’s “Pershing at the Front,” the latter printed in 1927. The third is Newman Levy’s burlesque of Hamlet, printed on the humor page in 1923.* 

Ironically, “Pershing at the Front,” though one of the American magazine's most-requested poems, was not accurately remembered by the historian of The Saturday Evening Post — it is most certainly not a serious poem.

Pershing at the Front

The General came in a new tin hat
To the shell-torn front where the war was at;
With a faithful Aide at his good right hand
He made his way toward No Man’s Land,
And a tough Top Sergeant there they found,
And a Captain, too, to show them round.

Pershing in the Argonne,
Photo National Archives and Records Administration

Threading the ditch, their heads bent low,
Toward the lines of the watchful foe
They came through the murk and the powder stench
Till the Sergeant whispered, “Third-line trench!”
And the Captain whispered, “Third-line trench!”
And the Aide repeated, “Third-line trench!”
And Pershing answered—not in French—
“Yes, I see it. Third-line trench.”

Again they marched with wary tread,
Following on where the Sergeant led
Through the wet and the muck as well,
Till they came to another parallel.
They halted there in the mud and drench,
And the Sergeant whispered, “Second-line trench!”
And the Captain whispered, “Second-line trench!”
And the Aide repeated, “Second-line trench!”
And Pershing nodded: “Second-line trench!”

Yet on they went through mire like pitch
Till they came to a fine and spacious ditch
Well camouflaged from planes and Zeps
Where soldiers stood on firing steps
And a Major sat on a wooden bench;
And the Sergeant whispered, “First-line trench!”
And the Captain whispered, “First-line trench!”
And the Aide repeated, “First-line trench!”
And Pershing whispered, “Yes, I see.
How far off is the enemy?”
And the faithful Aide he asked, asked he,
“How far off is the enemy?”
And the Captain breathed in a softer key,
“How far off is the enemy?”

Wally Walgren, Stars and Stripes
15 Feb 1918, p. 7

The silence lay in heaps and piles
And the Sergeant whispered, “Just three miles.”
And the Captain whispered, “Just three miles.”
And the Aide repeated, “Just three miles.”
“Just three miles!” the General swore,
“What in the heck are we whispering for?”
And the faithful Aide the message bore,
“What in the heck are we whispering for?”
And the Captain said in a gentle roar,
“What in the heck are we whispering for?”
“Whispering for?” the echo rolled;
And the Sergeant whispered, “I have a cold.”

            —Arthur Guiterman**

The poem good-naturedly lampoons military hierarchy and protocol. The lowest ranking soldier, the whispering Sergeant, is the man who is most informed about the realities of war in the front-line trenches. Yet when the commander of the American Army visits the front, he is shielded from first-hand knowledge by his faithful Aide and a respectable Captain, who take it upon themselves to translate and repeat everything that the Sergeant says. While it may seem insignificant to the others that the Sergeant has a head-cold, the health of this one man alters the Generals’ – and the others’— understanding of the entire military situation. Because they have not taken the time to learn of the lowly Sergeant’s laryngitis, they interpret his whispers as signaling the close proximity of the German lines. With its last line, the poem mocks the isolation of those in command and their estrangement from the men whom they order into battle.

Why was the poem so popular? Perhaps because it uses humor to make a serious point. High school history teacher Wilbur Kirwan was remembered by a former student as trying to explain the paradox of life and war:  

things that seemingly contradict each other – such as humor and horror – can coexist,

which is why as Memorial Day approached each year he [Kirwan] would recite Wilfrid Owen’s haunting Dulce et Decorum Est, followed by Arthur Guiterman’s hilarious Pershing at the Front.***

It’s a fascinating pairing of poems, one that challenges the ways in which we often simplify and stereotype past events and those who experienced them.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

* A Short History of the Saturday Evening Post, Curtis Publishing Company, 1937, p. 27.

** Guiterman wrote and published over 4,000 verses in his lifetime and co-founded the Poetry Society of America. Joyce Kilmer wrote several reviews of his work, and in a 1916 article called Guiterman “The Most American of Poets” (The Independent, 20 Nov. 1916, pp. 312-313).

*** Gary E. Frank, “Education, transformation, transcendence,” The Colgate Scene, March 2003.

Denial

The Kensingtons at Laventie by Eric Kennington © IWM ART 15661

“The Soldier”— written in 1914 while Rupert Brooke was on leave at Christmas, before he boarded a troop ship bound for Gallipoli, before he died en route—is one of the best-known poems of the Great War.  Brooke’s poem famously begins,

If I should die, think only this of me:

That there’s some corner of a foreign field

That is for ever England. There shall be

In that rich earth a richer dust concealed….

Researcher Sarah Wearne estimates that there may be over 100 allusions to Brooke’s poem “The Soldier” in epitaphs for British Commonwealth war dead.*

Poetry responds to poetry, and Roderick Watson Kerr’s “Denial” vehemently contradicts the ideals expressed in Brooke’s poem. Kerr was a Scottish soldier who served with the Royal Tanks Corps until seriously wounded near Bapaume in 1918.  His poem begins with an allusion to “The Soldier,” but deliberately adopts a colloquial, fatalistic tone.

Denial

Levens  Roll of Honour

If I should die—chatter only this:—
‘A bullet flew by that did not miss!’
I did not give life up because of a friend;
That bullet came thro’, and that was the end!

Don’t put up a cross where my dung will be laid,
But scatter some wheat—and bread will be made;
Don't say I'm a hero because I was shot;
A bullet won't make one what one is not.

Don't scribble my name upon Honour's scroll
And plaster it up on the Churches hall:
What honour is there in being forced to die?
We slaughter a pig—but we make it a fry!

And what are the odds ‘tween the pig and I?
The pig can't help dying—he is forced to die;
And so with myself, when a bullet comes thro’
I simply must die—then why the ado?

Oh! if I should die—chatter only this—
‘A bullet flew by that did not miss’;
I did not give life up because of a friend; 
That bullet came thro’ and voilà, the end!’

            —Roderick Watson Kerr

Kerr’s poem argues that there is no glory for those killed in war. As he imagines his own death, Kerr denies that he has sacrificed his life for a noble cause, not even to save the life of a friend. If he dies, it will be simply because he was shot by a bullet that found its target. As American soldier-poet Brian Turner writes nearly 100 years later in his poem “Here, Bullet” (recalling his experience in the war in Iraq), “If a body is what you want,/ then here is bone and gristle and flesh.”

Kerr also dispels any attempt to reference the language of ancient epics, of men cut down like wheat in the harvest of battle (the image first used in the Iliad 11.67-71). Soldiers’ corpses will enrich wheat crops sown over the dead, yet the bread made from that wheat will be eaten by others who are wholly unaware of the decaying bodies that fertilized their food. (Some of the same themes can be found in Alice Corbin’s poem “The Harvest.”)

Men Resting Bapaume Road, William Orpen
© IWM ART 2375

The first and the last stanzas of “Denial” close with the blunt declaration that death is simply the end—there is no honor nor heroism when soldiers are “forced to die.”

Kerr dedicated his volume of poetry War Daubs (1919) “To my brother George, Killed in Action in Gallipoli, May 3^rd, 1915. He lives, embalmed, unchanging, and apart.” George John Kerr's body was never found; he is listed on the Helles memorial to the missing.  

Booklist promoted Kerr’s poems shortly after their publication and remarked in its one-line review that they presented “Stark war pictures which remind one a little of the strength of Sassoon.”** The New York Times review elaborated,

“War Daubs,” by R. Watson Kerr, is a book of verse occasioned by the war that suggests the Sassoon attitude at times. There is no glorifying of the picturesqueness of battle…. This is all well enough, for we can stand it without undue shuddering, but it has been done sufficiently for one war.  Besides, it has been done much better, with a more vivid appreciation of its values.  We hardly need to have the lesson rubbed in any longer.  War has lost its beauty for all time.”***

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

* Sarah Wearne, Epitaphs of the Great War website and the three-volume book series, Epitaphs of the Great War: The Somme, Passchendaele, and The Last 100 Days. 

** “Kerr, R. Watson. War daubs,” Booklist, Oct. 1920, p. 23.

*** “British and American Poets—A Contrast,” New York Times Book Review and Magazine, 27 June 1920, p. 16.