#remembrancesunday Timeline

2d

Well how do you do, Private William McBride?
Do you mind if I sit here down by your graveside?
And I’ll rest for a while in the warm summer sun,
I’ve been walking all day long, and I’m nearly done…

—Eric Bogle, “No Man’s Land”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxwBg3X3gBI

#RemembranceSunday #Scottish #literature #song #WW1

No Man’s Land (The Green Fields of France)
Eric Bogle

Well how do you do, Private William McBride?
Do you mind if I sit here down by your graveside?
And I’ll rest for a while in the warm summer sun,
I’ve been walking all day long, and I’m nearly done.
I see by your gravestone you were only nineteen
When you joined the glorious fallen in 1916,
Well, I hope you died quick, and I hope you died clean,
Or, Willie McBride, was it slow and obscene?

Did they beat the drums slowly,
Did they sound the fife lowly,
Did the rifles fire o’er ye as they lowered you down?
Did the bugles sing The Last Post in chorus?
Did the pipes play the Flowers of the Forest?

And did you leave a wife or a sweetheart behind
In some faithful heart is your memory enshrined?
And though you died back in 1916,
To that loyal heart are you always nineteen?
Or are you a stranger without even a name,
Forever enshrined behind some glass pane
In an old photograph, torn and tattered and stained,
And fading to yellow in a brown leather frame.

Did they beat the drums slowly,
Did they sound the fife lowly,
Did the rifles fire o’er ye as they lowered you down?
Did the bugles sing The Last Post in chorus?
Did the pipes play the Flowers of the Forest?

ALT

Well the sun’s shining now on these green fields of France;
The warm wind blows gently and the red poppies dance.
The trenches have vanished long under the plough
No gas and no barbed wire, no guns firing now.
But here in this graveyard it’s still No Man’s Land
The countless white crosses in mute witness stand
To man’s blind indifference to his fellow man,
And a whole generation who were butchered and damned.

Did they beat the drums slowly,
Did they sound the fife lowly,
Did the rifles fire o’er ye as they lowered you down?
Did the bugles sing The Last Post in chorus?
Did the pipes play the Flowers of the Forest?

And I can’t help but wonder, now Willie McBride,
Do all those who lie here, know why they died?
Did you really believe them when they told you the “The Cause?”
You really believed that this war would end wars?
The suffering, the sorrow, the glory, the shame,
The killing, the dying, it was all done in vain,
For Willie McBride, it all happened again,
And again, and again, and again, and again.

Did they beat the drums slowly,
Did they sound the fife lowly,
Did the rifles fire o’er ye as they lowered you down?
Did the bugles sing The Last Post in chorus?
Did the pipes play the Flowers of the Forest?

Did the bugles sing The Last Post in chorus?
Did the pipes play the Flowers of the Forest?

ALT

2 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

2d

When you see millions of the mouthless dead
Across your dreams in pale battalions go,
Say not soft things as other men have said,
That you’ll remember. For you need not so…

—Charles Hamilton Sorley (1895–1915)

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47427/when-you-see-millions-of-the-mouthless-dead

#RemembranceSunday #Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #warpoetry #WW1

“When You See Millions of the Mouthless Dead”
by Charles Hamilton Sorley

When you see millions of the mouthless dead
Across your dreams in pale battalions go,
Say not soft things as other men have said,
That you’ll remember. For you need not so.
Give them not praise. For, deaf, how should they know
It is not curses heaped on each gashed head?
Nor tears. Their blind eyes see not your tears flow.
Nor honour. It is easy to be dead.
Say only this, “They are dead.” Then add thereto,
“Yet many a better one has died before.”
Then, scanning all the o’ercrowded mass, should you
Perceive one face that you loved heretofore,
It is a spook. None wears the face you knew.
Great death has made all his for evermore.

ALT

1 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

2d

Past life, past tears, far past the grave,
The tryst is set for me,
Since, for our all, your all you gave
On the slopes of Picardy…

—Violet Jacob, “To A.H.J.”

Violet Jacob’s only son, Harry, was killed at the Battle of the Somme on 16 July 1916, aged 20

https://www.cwgc.org/find-records/find-war-dead/casualty-details/502598/arthur-henry-augustus-jacob/

#RemembranceSunday #Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #warpoetry #WW1

Violet Jacob
“To A.H.J.”

Past life, past tears, far past the grave,‍‍
‍‍‍‍The tryst is set for me,
Since, for our all, your all you gave‍‍
‍‍‍‍On the slopes of Picardy.

On Angus, in the autumn nights,‍‍
‍‍‍‍The ice-green light shall lie.
Beyond the trees the Northern Lights‍‍
‍‍‍‍Slant on the belts of sky.

But miles on miles from Scottish soil‍‍
‍‍‍‍You sleep, past war and scaith,
Your country’s freedman, loosed from toil.‍‍
‍‍‍‍In honour and in faith.

For Angus held you in her spell,
‍‍‍‍Her Grampians, faint and blue,
Her ways, the speech you knew so well,
‍‍‍‍Were half the world to you.

Yet rest, my son; our souls are those‍‍
‍‍‍‍Nor time nor death can part,
And lie you proudly, folded close‍‍
‍‍‍‍To France’s deathless heart.

ALT

1 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

2d

Chan fhaca mi Lannes aig Ratasbon
no MacGillFhinnein aig Allt Èire
no Gill-Ìosa aig Cùil Lodair,
ach chunnaic mi Sasannach san Èipheit.

(I did not see Lannes at Ratisbon
nor MacLennan at Auldearn
nor Gillies MacBain at Culloden,
but I saw an Englishman in Egypt.)

—Somhairle MacGill-Eain (Sorley MacLean), “Curaidhean” (“Heroes”)

Sorley MacLean was severely wounded at El Alamein, 1942

#RemembranceSunday #Scottish #literature #Gaelic #Gaidhlig #poem #poetry #warpoetry #WW2

Curaidhean
Somhairle MacGill-Eain

Chan fhaca mi Lannes aig Ratasbon
no MacGillFhinnein aig Allt Èire
no Gill-Ìosa aig Cùil Lodair,
ach chunnaic mi Sasannach san Èipheit.

Fear beag truagh le gruaidhean pluiceach
is glùinean a’ bleith a chèile,
aodann guireanach gun tlachd ann –
còmhdach an spioraid bu trèine.

Cha robh buaidh air ‘san taigh-òsta
’n àm nan dòrn a bhith gan dùnadh’,
ach leòmhann e ri uchd a’ chatha,
anns na frasan guineach mùgach.

Thàinig uair-san leis na sligean,
leis na spealgan-iarainn beàrnach,
anns an toit is anns an lasair,
ann an crith is maoim na h-àraich.

Thàinig fios dha san fhrois pheilear
e bhith gu spreigearra ’na dhiùlnach:
is b’ e sin e fhad ’s a mhair e,
ach cha b’ fhada fhuair e dh’ùine.

Chùm e ghunnachan ris na tancan,
a ’ bocail le sgreuch shracaidh stàirnich
gus an d’ fhuair e fhèin mun stamaig
an deannal ud a chuir ri làr e,
beul sìos an gainmhich ’s an greabhal,
gun diog o ghuth caol grànda.

Cha do chuireadh crois no meadal
ri uchd no ainm no g’ a chàirdean:
cha robh a bheag dhe fhòirne maireann,
’s nan robh cha bhiodh am facal làidir;
’s co-dhiù, ma sheasas ursann-chatha,
leagar mòran air a shàillibh
gun dùil ri cliù, nach iarr am meadal
no cop sam bith à beul na h-àraich.

Chunnaic mi gaisgeach mòr à Sasainn,
fearachan bochd nach laigheadh sùil air;
cha b’ Alasdair à Gleanna Garadh –
is thug e gal beag air mo shùilean.

ALT

Heroes
Translator: Sorley MacLean

I did not see Lannes at Ratisbon
nor MacLennan at Auldearn
nor Gillies MacBain at Culloden,
but I saw an Englishman in Egypt.

A poor little chap with chubby cheeks
and knees grinding each other,
pimply unattractive face –
garment of the bravest spirit.

He was not a hit ‘in the pub
in the time of the fists being closed,’
but a lion against the breast of battle,
in the morose wounding showers.

His hour came with the shells,
with the notched iron splinters,
in the smoke and flame,
in the shaking and terror of the battlefield.

Word came to him in the bullet shower
that he should be a hero briskly,
and he was that while he lasted,
but it wasn’t much time he got.

He kept his guns to the tanks,
bucking with tearing crashing screech,
until he himself got, about the stomach,
that biff that put him to the ground,
mouth down in sand and gravel,
without a chirp from his ugly high-pitched voice.

No cross or medal was put to his
chest or to his name or to his family;
there were not many of his troop alive,
and if there were their word would not be strong.
And at any rate, if a battle post stands,
many are knocked down because of him,
not expecting fame, not wanting a medal
or any froth from the mouth of the field of slaughter.

I saw a great warrior of England,
a poor manikin on whom no eye would rest;
no Alasdair of Glen Garry;
and he took a little weeping to my eyes.

ALT

0 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

2d

He lacks the ordnance of words.
A self-portrait shows
stitches where his mouth should be;
eyes like empty casings.
He left a part of himself in the desert,
this ultra-Marine…

—Sandra Ireland, “Ultramarine”
published in New Writing Scotland 36 (2018)

#RemembranceSunday #Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #trauma

Sandra Ireland
Ultramarine

Trauma can affect the non-verbal
part of the brain. Art can free feelings of loss
and grief and pain from the subconscious,
aiding vocalisation.

He lacks the ordnance of words.
A self-portrait shows
stitches where his mouth should be;
eyes like empty casings.
He left a part of himself
in the desert,
this ultra-Marine,
the part which glows
Tyrian Purple.

Now he is bone black inside;
loaded with dark pigment;
aggregates
to be ground down and
made smooth with linseed words.
Time heals.
Give yourself time.

Time is just a jumbled mix
on his palette;
there was a lot of ochre out there,
and green earth and
sometimes, now he’s home,
he feels the trickle
of warm vermilion
seeping into
his boots.

ALT

0 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original