How I Won the V.C.

While the poetry of Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon speaks eloquently of the pity of war, soldiers also used humor to cope with the trauma and tragedies of the conflict.  The ANZAC Book is a collection of poems, stories, jokes, and sketches created by men who fought at Gallipoli in 1915.  One of the poems included is a comic ballad in the style of Robert Service and his pre-war poems, such as "The Shooting of Dan McGrew."   

To the following poem, I’ll add only two notes: the asterisks and vocabulary notes are included in the original text – and this is a poem best read aloud.

How I Won the V.C.

(The sort of thing we must expect to hear after the war is ended)

Yes, that’s the red ribbon I’m wearing—

      Just a small strip of scarlet, you see,

But there’s no one can tell how I prize it

      Nor the glow it occasions to me.

For it speaks of the broad fields of honour

      Which we wrung from the red jaws of hell—

And my eyes grow bedimmed for the cobbers*

      Who battled and conquered and fell.

Yes, that’s the V.C.  How I won it,

      It isn’t for me to relate.

(We heroes are always so modest,

      And boasting’s a thing that I hate.)

Well—seeing you write for the papers,

      I’ll make an exception of you;

Don’t mention my name if you write it,

      Tho’ every partic’lar is true.

It was during a fight for an outpost—

      It was called the Green Knoll, I believe—

And the Turks on the top dealt out slaughter:

      They’d a week of defeat to retrieve.

It was five thousand feet to the summit,

      And almost as steep as a wall;

And they met every charge as we rushed it

      With bayonet, shrapnel, and ball.

‘Twas defended by nine tiers of trenches

      (That’s strong for an outpost, you’ll guess),

With twelve 42 centimetres,

      Which kicked up the deuce of a mess.

We’d been fighting five days without resting,

      When the eighth line of trenches we took;

For ev’ry man there was a hero—

      From me to the company’s cook.

And there was the knoll just before us—

      Some two hundred paces or more;

With barb-wire and bayonets bristling,

      And the parapets sloppy with gore.

And the howitzers roared like perdition

      And vomited fire and death;

Till we saw it was madness to charge them,

      And halted a moment for breath.

Ah, stranger, imagine the picture,

      And then stand with horror aghast—

We had fought for a month without sleeping,

      And we stood facing failure at last!

We had squandered the best of our Army,

      We had “stuck” to our ultimate gasp;

And there, in the moment of triumph,

      The prize was to slip from our grasp.

Then suddenly out sprang the Major,

      His face lighted over with bliss—

“Pass the word there for Lance-Private Wilson;

      He’ll find us a way out of this!”

(If there’s one thing I hate, it is skiting*

      When I hear it I always feel sore,

So you won’t think I boast when I tell you

      He ought to have done it before!)

And a great cheer arose as I faced him

      And nodded (I never salute),

And said to him: “I’ll see you thro’, sir,

      And win you some glory to boot.

The chaps of the 16^th Battalion

      Are not easy snoozers to beat;

I’ve a notion (I says) that will lick them—

      ‘Arf a dollar I line them a treat!

“I don’t want no red-tapey orders,

      And I don’t want no kudos nor pelf;

You get back to your own little dug-outs,

      And I’ll tackle the knoll by myself!

I’ll lay down my life for my country,

      For old England, the land of the free;

And you’ll find that the bloke called Horatius

      Was only a trifle to me!”

Then I shook hands with all the battalion

      (There were only thirteen of us left),

And they cheered me again till the foemen

      Must have thought us of senses bereft.

And I gathered my arms and my rations,

      And girded myself for the fray—

If I live to be ninety or over,

      I will always remember that day!

I had five hundred rounds for my rifle,

      And of hand bombs I took forty-one;

A machine-gun was slung to my shoulders,

      And I carried a periscope gun.

As for rations—well, all I took with me

      Was a tin of Fray Bentos* or two,

And in my breast pocket I planted

      A nice Army biscuit to chew.

Then I waved a farewell to my cobbers—

      I was much too affected to speak;

There are times when the bravest of soldiers

      Have feelings that render them weak.

One tear—then I turned to the trenches,

      And charged like a lion at bay

As I caught the last words of our Colonel,

      Crying: “Bonzer* … Gorstrafem … Hooray!”

You talk of charmed lives –I’d a thousand;

      As I rushed up that hill like a goat

I got thirty-two shots thro’ my trousers

      And nine shrapnel balls thro’ my coat;

And a Japanese bomb burst beneath me

      —For a moment I gave up all hope,

But it proved the best thing that could happen,

      For it pushed me half-way up the slope.

Then a fifteen-inch shell came straight at me

      —I hadn’t a moment to shirk—

But it struck on that hard Army biscuit

      And rebounded—and blew up a Turk!

You doubt it? Well if you want proof, sir,

      The truth of this tale to endorse,

Here’s the biscuit—that dent in the middle

      Is where the shell struck it, of course!

Ah yes, ‘twas a terrible moment;

      I was then slightly wounded, ‘tis true—

Just a bayonet stab in the gizzard

      And a crack from a bullet or two.

But I gathered new strength for the conflict,

      And, just as the darkness came down,

I was under their parapets, resting,

      And I knew I had beaten them brown!

For this was the scheme I had worked on,

      ‘Twas a little bit mean, you may say—

But I knew that the Turks were half-famished,

      And fought on one biscuit a day;

And the tins of Fray Bentos I carried,

      I chucked in the trench then and there;

And I heard the poor beggars pounce on it,

      And I knew they were caught in the snare!

            *       *       *       *       *       *

The morning broke, smiling and peaceful—

      Ah, shame, that we soldiers must fight—

‘Twas a piteous scene met my vision

      With the first rosy quivers of light.

When I peeped in the trench, not a Turk, sir,

      Was left of that legion accurst—

For they’d whacked the Fray Bentos among them,

      And each man had perished from thirst.

That’s the yarn.  If you know the 16^th, sir,

      You’ll know how our Colonel can smile.

He said to me: “Corporal Wilson,

      You’ve dished up the beggars in style.”

Promotion! Some say I deserve it,

      But that’s really nothing to me;

I don’t want no honour or glory,

      But—that’s how I won the V.C.

                        —“Crosscut,” 16^th Battalion, A.I.F.

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*Cobber is Australian for a tried and trusted friend.

*Skiting—Australian for “swanking” in speech.  “Skite” – blatherskite.

*Fray Bentos is a brand of tinned meat.

*Bonzer—Australian for “excellent.”

Anzac Limericks

In December of 1915, in the midst of supervising troop withdrawals from the failed Gallipoli campaign, General W.R. Birdwood, Commander of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps, penned an introduction to the ANZAC Book, a collection of writings, cartoons, and sketches contributed by the ANZAC men who had fought at Gallipoli. The General expressed his opinion that the material in the book “does as much credit to them as the fighting here has done to the Force,” but added that “those who are more critical [of the literary offering] will perhaps remember the circumstances under which the contributions have been prepared, in small dug-outs, with shells and bullets frequently whistling overhead.”  He concluded,

No words of mine could ever convey to readers at their firesides in Australia, New Zealand and the Old Country, one-half of what all their boys have been through, nor is my poor pen capable of telling them of the never-failing courage, determination and cheerfulness of those who have so willingly fought and given their lives for their King and country’s sake.*

As happened often in the First World War, one way in which men coped with the psychological traumas of war was through humour. The Gallipoli soldiers’ 1915/1916 anthology offered two “ANZAC Alphabets” (“N is the Navy bombarding a lair,/ Ignoring the fact that there’s nobody there”) as well as a short story that recounted the tale of a Sergeant Major who faints dead away when he learns his supply officer has been writing poetry.  And in addition to patriotic and nostalgic verse that recalled scenes of home, the book included “Anzac Limericks”:

There’s a certain darned nuisance called “Beachy,”**

Whose shells are exceedingly screechy;

            But we’re keeping the score,

            And we’re after your gore—

So look out, “Beachy Bill,” when we meet ye.

They’ve given us all respirators,

And we’ve bundles of ancient Spectators;***

            But we’d give up the two

            For a good oyster stew,

Or a dixie of chipped pertaters.

            -- C.D. Mc.

More First World War limericks (this time written by a Canadian on the Western Front) can be read in an earlier post on this blog: “Laughing at War.”

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* ANZAC Book, Cassell, 1916, p. x.

** “Beachy Bill” was the nickname given to the Turkish artillery guns overlooking Anzac Cove, concealed batteries that repeatedly shelled Allied positions on the coast.   

*** A weekly British magazine that featured articles on culture, politics, and current events.

Unreturning

Cambridge War Memorial

In October of 1918, in its review of newly published works, The Bookman praised a small volume of poetry titled Lost City, claiming that the work

makes a trilogy with Rupert Brooke and Rose Macaulay. It is a book of Cambridge and the Fen Country and of those who went from Cambridge, that city of youth, never to return.  The poetry has the clear colour, the pure music, the intensity that entitles it to a place in the trilogy. 

           

The author, Kathleen Montgomery (née Coates) Wallace, was a graduate of Girton College, Cambridge. Together with Margaret Postgate (Cole) and three other Girton students, Kathleen Coates had contributed to a small volume of love poetry, Bits of Things, published in the spring of 1914.  In the halcyon days before the Great War, while earning her degree in English, she was joined at Cambridge by her younger brother Basil, who studied medicine at Queens’ College, where their father had served as Bursar and Assistant Tutor before his death in 1912. When war was declared, Kathleen's brother Basil was an early volunteer, joining the 10^th Rifle Brigade in 1914.  Sent to France early in the summer of 1915, he was killed by a German sniper within sight of his own lines on 7 September 1915, just days before his 22^nd birthday.  His body was never recovered.* 

Lost City, divided into “Before” and “After,” mourns the death of her brother and struggles to create a locus for grieving a soldier who has no known grave, as his sister remembers him in the familiar sights of the university town they shared.

May Term, 1916

I have come back in a rich hour of May

My heart, to this gray town of yours and mine,

To the grave gardens by the river’s line

Where scents rise softly at the end of day

—Back from hot city pavements worlds away,

Where life flows outwards in a ceaseless line,

Where soul treads hard on soul and makes no sign.

—To the dear smell of lawns, and the branches sway.

Gold of the sky, black boughs, and the rooks call

The evening stillness rises like a tide—

Across the cobbled court I hush my tread;

There is your window, lamplight on your wall,

There is a shadow on the blind inside—

But you are dead, my dear, but you are dead.

            —Kathleen Montgomery Wallace

On the home front, life continued, and it is this that tinges all of reality with a sense of the surreal, as described in the final stanzas of another of Wallace’s poems “Unreturning”:

Red leaves above your door,

   Gray walls and echoing street

Whose stones will never more

   Ring to your passing feet;

Strange! to think Term is here,

   Life leads the same old dance,

While you lie dead, my dear,

   Somewhere in France….

The War Record of 10^th (Service) Battalion records the details of Basil Montgomery Coates’ death in its entry for 6th - 13th September 1915:

2nd Lieut. B.M. Coates and Corporal Felton while out on patrol on 7th September were seen by the enemy when about sixty yards from their trenches and were fired upon. Corporal Felton was hit in three places, Lieutenant Coates was also hit. Lieutenant Coates told Corporal Felton he was done for and to go back. Corporal Felton reported the matter and 2nd Lieut. Everard went out immediately and reached the body, but was forced to return as fire was opened on him. He reported that Lieutenant Coates was in his opinion dead. At dusk an Officer patrol went out to secure the body, they reached the spot but found that it had been moved, and from marks on the ground they formed the opinion that it had been dragged into the German trenches. Owing to the ground sloping at this spot towards the German trenches it was impossible to see the ground from our lines. In the evening a German sentry shouted over to our lines “officer killed.”

Ploegsteert Memorial
Photo by Andrew Arnold (ww1geek.com)

Coates’ commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel S. J. Loftus, wrote to Basil’s mother, “Your son was killed yesterday (7 Sept.) while on patrol duty, and unfortunately we were unable to recover his body, which the Germans have taken into their lines, and which they will no doubt give an honourable burial.” Another officer, Lieutenant C. Warren, added, “Coates was one of the bravest men I’ve known. … He had become very keen about day patrolling, which is risky work and had done several good patrols…. It [Coates’ death] was a terrible shock to us all, as we were all immensely fond of him. He was so good-natured and had such a charming manners, and was always cheerful and considerate.”

In January of 1917, the Cambridge Independent Press announced the engagement of Kathleen Montgomery Coates to Major James Hill Wallace, a Canadian officer who was attached to the Canadian Mounted Rifles and who by the war’s end was serving as Chief Supervisor of the Canadian YMCA. The couple were married in February of 1917, and after the Armistice, Kathleen Montgomery Wallace traveled with her husband to Canada and China, raising four sons and writing numerous novels and children’s books, among them, Immortal Wheat: An Imaginative Interpretation of the Lives and Works of the Brontës. 

When she died in 1958, the London Times obituary incorrectly provided her age as 76 (she was only 68) and noted that she was “a novelist of pleasant and unaffected accomplishment and in later years the author of a number of attractive books for children…. Though her writing lacked something of distinction, she was observant and sympathetic, had a nice feminine feeling for the romantic verities, and was almost always pleasant and easy to read.”  The obituary also stated that “among the 20 or so volumes which she produced, some of them perhaps too much inclined towards the sentimental.**  No mention was made of Kathleen Montgomery Wallace’s war poetry. 

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* Much of the biographical information is taken from the Mill Road Cemetery website, researched and authored by Dr. Jonathan Holmes, Emma Easterbrook, and Ian Bent.

** London Times, 31 March 1958, p. 10.