Lest We Forget: Poem for Somme 100

By Bridie Breen

Our final post in Manchester Irish Writers' commemoration of the Battle of the Somme.

LEST WE FORGET

Lest we forget

a watery grave 

or grovelling in muck

in rat filled ditches

by brave young men.

Hell bent on justice

and survival.

There for duty

loyalty to brother 

allies and crown

Full of desire

for a better world

with freedom from tyranny.

No time to admire

amber sunsets

at Arromanche

Each new day dawn

scattered the dead

in grit and gloom.

Ashes to ashes

away from home

Au Revoir letters

written before bullet

shot and shell.

Resilient mothers

suffocated by grief

as paper telegrams 

choked breath and dreams.

The unborn unknowing

of the reason

for bravery.

Three score and ten

the allotted span 

where peace reigns.

Lest we forget 

the sacrifice

of a ghosted generation

that gifted our sleep

by their bloodied youth.

Beaches of golden silt

buried deep the past

Inscriptions as markers

of heroes not forgotten.

We the keepers 

the watchers

of our world.

Lest we forget.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Poppy images courtesy of & © Alison Morton.

Text © Bridie Breen

Bridie has been a member of Manchester Irish Writers for quite a few years. Although her first love is poetry, she writes on all topics. She has contributed to the group’s publications “Stones of the Heart” and “Changing Skies”. Her Changing Skies piece is available to download as a voice over. She regularly performs at the group’s events. She has had successful collaborations with New Attitude theatre and Emerge theatre in the past and more recently performed with Athlone Poetry in the Park group. She has taken her love of poetry to local cafe settings. She enjoys writing short scripts too. Her wish is to have a poetry anthology published. In the meantime, she’ll be trying out at performance style poetry venues to showcase new work in the coming months.

To find out more about MIW's Somme 100 Commemoration, please click here.

More like Rugby than Football

By Des Farry

This is a different perspective on the Somme which looks at brief moments of normality occurring in a terrible conflict which is set against a sports background and draws some comparisons between both.

MORE LIKE RUGBY THAN FOOTBALL

They were sent on the attack on the first day, their objective was the German Schwaben Redoubt.

The Ulsters reached their target but couldn’t hold it. In the horror and confusion of the battle the reinforcements sent to support them never made it through no man’s land and they were forced to retreat. The soil of Thiepval Wood and the trenches previously dug there by the French and Scottish Regiments, named after local landmarks or place names of Scotland, hold the bodies and names of those who never made it and were never found, a cemetery of trees not headstones.

It wasn’t just them that day, it was the same all over.  It was the way that it was all through the following weeks and months, a never ending repetitive story that never reached a conclusion.
They weren’t alone. There were so many other different races of people that he had never met before.
The Ulsters were fighting alongside Irish troops from the Connaught Rangers. The English, Welsh, Scottish, Australian, South Africans were their colleagues with whom they could communicate. It was more difficult to do so with the French and French-African troops.

It was during the rare breaks in this horror that they sometimes were able to talk about the life that they had lived before they all had come together in this hell hole.

Football was a favoured topic. Competitive football had stopped in England. No one knew when it would restart. He’d been talking about it with the Manchesters. There was a bribery scandal involving one of their clubs which remained unresolved.

The break along the line on Christmas Day to play football on No Man’s Land was a far too brief escape to normality  from  a pointless shifting war, where you moved forward, then backward to where you were a few months ago. A time to exchange gifts and souvenirs, try each other’s helmets and swap cigarettes.

It stuck in his mind. It was only much later when he read about the Connaught Rangers involvement that he thought that the whole war was more like rugby than football. It was the pack moving forward and backwards, it was about maintaining possession and territory.

~~~~~~~~
Text © Des Farry

Des Farry comes originally from near Omagh in Northern Ireland and has lived in Greater Manchester for over 40 years. He has been writing since about age 15 (local notes for Ulster Herald). He has written or contributed to various published and internal non-fiction organisational professional guides and books on corporate finance plus a number of short stories for various competitions and the former Dublin Writers Site (Electric Acorn).

To find out more about MIW's Somme 100 Commemoration, please click here.

The Widow Quinn: Poem for Somme 100

By Kevin McMahon

Just about every village in Ireland had them: old women in black shawls who lived totally secluded lives, often scorned or feared by their neighbours. Few took the trouble to understand such women, or what had made them the way they were. 

At a time of great political upheaval in Ireland, the tens of thousands of men who enlisted to fight in the First World War were derided for turning their backs on the fight for freedom at home  The sacrifice that so many made was disregarded.  This poem focuses on one such case.

THE WIDOW QUINN

Birdsong shrank the road outside her house, 

To a dappled tunnel, thrilled with noise,

Draped with cloak of honeysuckle scent.

Our step quickened when we passed her gate,

Not taking chances, hushed and fearful 

Of the older, bolder ones who risked

A bating shout or threw fir cones at the door.  

We deciphered parents’ warnings,

“Poor woman” comments, shorn of sympathy;

Their surreptitious nods, and knowing looks

Belied begrudged respect for a soldier’s wife.

Her wits had been astray since his early death,

At a place called Somme in France, they said.

A wasted life in England’s war, they said.

One winter day I met her face to face,

Black-shawled as ever, bent with strain

As she hefted water from the roadside spring.

She stopped and gaped a toothless smile at me

But contagious dread tore my gaze aside,

And breathless with panic I bolted home.

That March she died – as she had lived so long – 

Alone, her last instructions written for the priest.

Beneath the widow’s shawl, her waist length hair 

Had been plaited in a coil of startling white.

As she had willed the hair was then cut short,

Its strands hung in the branches of her trees.

When, later, neighbours gathered at the church –

Each drawn by duty rather than respect –  

They shook their heads and shrugged, and all agreed

The “poor old thing was soft this many year”,

While in the budding bushes round her house

The birds wove nests with glinting flecks of white.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Text © Kevin McMahon

Kevin has been a member of Manchester Irish Writers since 1998 – with a few years’ absence due to work commitments prior to his retirement!  He has contributed to the group’s publications “The Retting Dam”, “Stones of the Heart” and “Changing Skies”, and regularly performs at the group’s events.  He is a former winner of the “New Writing” award at Listowel Writers’ Week in Country Kerry, and has been shortlisted for a number of other awards for memoirs and short stories.

With Alrene Hughes, Kevin co-edited the publication of monologues arising from the Changing Skies project.  His scripts have been professionally performed in various venues, and he has had poetry broadcast on the BBC.

To find out more about MIW's Somme 100 Commemoration, please click here.

Testimonies of Trauma: The Somme and other Battles in World War 1

By Rose Morris

Military History has described much of the four months of Somme battles in detail. The records of the regiments attacked and the weaponry used, the comprehensive casualty lists are always used to describe the horrors of the First World War. They explain to us what happened in facts and figures but do not tell the real human story and the conditions in which these men fought. They fail to describe the daily life of the soldier, or of the landscape in which he lived, fought and got injured or died. They do not tell of his family, the loved ones he left behind. It is only from the letters that were sent while alive that we get an insight into their human state, their thoughts and fears, their plight or their reasons for being there.

To learn more about this we are fortunate that the interpretation by poets and writers who enlisted, soldiers letters to their loved ones, artists such as Paul Nash, photographers like Fr. Frank Browne, of Titanic fame, and the diaries of survivors to enlighten us on this aspect of war as they present their observations and feelings in a more emotional and human way.

Over the past one hundred years, so much great writing has been sourced from World War 1 testimonies. Donegal writer Patrick McGill’s novel, The Great Push. Sean O’Casey’s play, The Silver Tassie. How Many Miles to Babylon, Jennifer Johnston’s novel.  Frank McGuiness’s play, Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme.  A Long Long Way, Sebastian Barry’s novel.

The Silver Tassie by Sean O'Casey

They tell this story against a background of destruction, pungent smells and of mud and slime all of which appears to be ingrained in the mind of survivors, never to forgotten. Personal reports and stories of World War 1 describes men living like animals beneath the ground in trenches and dug-outs in a ‘world of mud’ and often makes use of words such as burrow and crawl, a language more associated with wildlife than human beings. Patrick McGill served as a stretcher-bearer on the Western Front, remarked “a soldier came crawling towards us on his belly, looking for all the world like a gigantic lobster that had escaped from its basket."

Often highlighted in these expressions is the soldier’s struggle with his conscience on his true reason for being there and his thoughts on the futility of war.

This can be more evident in the work of two Irish writers, Thomas Kettle and Francis Ledwidge for  they have also had to come to terms with fighting on behalf of a country which has historically been perceived as the enemy and both of them had been Irish Volunteers actively seeking independence alongside the poets and writers of the Celtic Revival who were among these executed in the 1916 Rising.

Thomas Kettle

In his poem, To my Daughter Betty, A Gift From God,  Kettle leaves very little doubt as to his feelings and his fear that he would not survive the war. It is dated ‘In the field, before Guillemont, Somme, Sept. 4, 1916’. He was killed in the battlefield in Ginchy four days later.

So here, while the mad guns curse overhead


And tired men sigh with mud for couch and floor,


Know that we fools, now with the foolish dead


Died not for flag, nor King nor Emperor 


But for a dream, born in a herdsman's shed,


And for the secret Scripture of the poor.

In a letter to his brother Kettle wrote,
“I hope to come back. If not, I believe that to sleep here in the France I have loved is no harsh fate, and that so passing out into silence, I shall help towards the Irish settlement." 

Francis Ledwidge

It is a striking contrast that Ledwidge’s war poetry, inspired by his memories of the natural habitat of his native County Meath, still retains a pastoral flavour while all around him was 'the muddy ranks of war’.

The hedges are all drowned in green grass seas,
 

And bobbing poppies flare like Elmo's light,
 

While siren-like the pollen-stained bees
 

Drone in the clover depths. And up the height
 

The cuckoo's voice is hoarse and broke with joy.
 

And on the lowland crops the crows make raid,.

 Before his death, Ledwidge wrote to the poet, Katherine Tynan:
"If I survive the war I have great hopes of writing something that will live. If not, I trust to be remembered in my own land for one or two things which its long sorrow inspired." 

He is, in fact, well remembered for his poem written after the execution of his friend Thomas McDonagh;

He shall not hear the bittern cry


In the wild sky, where he is lain,

Ledwidge was killed by an artillery shell at Ypres in 1917 and is buried in the cemetery at Artillery Wood at Boesinghe.

Kettle and Ledwidge have left behind a powerful testimony of their wartime experience as Irish nationalists in the British army. They speak to us on behalf of the many for whom we have no written record. They saw themselves engaged in a fight in Ireland's name and for Ireland's cause.

It is perhaps not wholly surprising that the writings of Kettle and Ledwidge have been overlooked. In Ireland. Their sacrifice was long overshadowed in modern Irish history which mainly dwelt on the General Post Office in 1916 rather than the Western Front.

Another interesting contrast is to be found in the literary responses from W.B. Yeats, who was not involved in military action yet he defines this particular period in Irish history and reflects on the dilemma of Irish men fighting in the British Army.

I know that I shall meet my fate

Somewhere among the clouds above;

Those that I fight I do not hate

Those that I guard I do not love.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~
© Rose Morris

Rose Morris was born near Dungannon, in Co. Tyrone. Having retired from a career in Art and Design Education in Greater Manchester she now spends more time pursuing her creative interests and involvement in community projects in Manchester and County Tyrone.
She co-founded the Manchester Irish Writers group with Alrene Hughes in 1994.
Her continued involvement and sharing within that group has greatly enhanced the development of her own writing.
Her short stories, monologues and poetry have been included in the Manchester Irish Writers’ published collections; The End of the Rodden, The Retting Dam, Stone of the Heart, Drawing Breath and Changing Skies.

To find out more about MIW's Somme 100 Commemoration, please click here.

July 1st 1916: Poem for Somme 100

By Bridie Breen

A poem to mark the centenary of the battle of the Somme, 100 years ago today.

JULY 1ST 1916

The lads practised the names 

of French townlands,

while holding fort in trenches

in Thiepval Wood.

Laughed in camaraderie, 

as they accented Chantilly.

Dreamt of Parisienne ladies

bedecked in fancy hats and lacy attire.

Imagined steamy fetlocks,

cigar smoke and winning bets.

But no horses ran on the racecourse,

in the Battle of the Somme.

Commanders commanded

and the war raged on.

Kitchener’s finger had pointed to all.

The young hearts of a nation swelled

as Volunteer armies forged.

Neighbours steeled by patriotic fervour,

Wished to serve alongside each other.

Childhood friends bonded forever 

as brothers in arms. 

Lord Derby called them a Battalion of Pals.

Regiments gathered in one week flat

from farmland and village,

they went together en masse

to stand tall or fall down,

in the name of their God, 

King and country.

Town and City names 

were bore with pride.

Enlisted not conscripted,

heading for the Western Front.

A cloudless sky, as dawn broke into July.

Mist laden Rivers Ancre and Somme

spoke of sunny possibilities to 

Generals in Chateau’s

While helmeted young men

Signed themselves with a cross

Kissed items of sentiment

Wrote hurried letters to mothers 

and sweethearts.

Looked to each other, 

nodded to bugle horn, then went over the top.

If war had not been the reason

a race perhaps or a restful relax.

No such luck as they waded

 in mucky rat filled pits.

Cannon fodder, 

so far away from home.

In that French valley of death 

machine gun fire showered 

from the sky

Wires had been cut in time,

a vain hope held for deadly attack.

Efforts failed to prise Beaucourt 

from German grasp

Haig and Joffre’s great plans met mishap

Concrete dugouts, withstood well

bombarding shells.

German trenches, stayed intact.

Bodies lay where they fell.

A mound for comrades to climb across,

caused much delay and further loss.

A hill too high to make advance

Boys were forced to become men

on that Gommecourt spot.

Lieutenant Cather’s gallantry

saved some wounded men 

Little chance himself of surviving

such a carnival of hell.

Nine Victoria crosses

awarded on that first Somme day

Six died in selfless sacrifice

Three lived to wear the medal

and relive the deed to their end

A cemetery now stands where once 

many thousands plodded

then dropped as stones

in the Big Push, onto No Man’s land.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Text © Bridie Breen

Bridie Breen has been a member of Manchester Irish Writers for quite a few years. Although her first love is poetry, she writes on all topics. She has contributed to the group’s publications “Stones of the Heart” and “Changing Skies”. Her Changing Skies piece is available to download as a voice over. She regularly performs at the group’s events. She has had successful collaborations with New Attitude theatre and Emerge theatre in the past and more recently performed with Athlone Poetry in the Park group. She has taken her love of poetry to local cafe settings. She enjoys writing short scripts too. Her wish is to have a poetry anthology published. In the meantime, she’ll be trying out at performance style poetry venues to showcase new work in the coming months.

To find out more about MIW's Somme 100 Commemoration, please click here.