Voices of Silence

VOICES OF
SILENCE

VOICES OF
SILENCE

T
HE
A
LTERNATIVE
B
OOK OF
F
IRST
W
ORLD
W
AR
P
OETRY

V
IVIEN
N
OAKES

First published in 2006

The History Press
The Mill, Brimscombe Port
Stroud, Gloucestershire,
GL
5 2
QG
www.thehistorypress.co.uk

Copyright selection and editorial matter © Vivien Noakes, 2006, 2013

This ebook edition first published in 2013

All rights reserved
© Acknowledgements on pages ix and x are a continuation of this copyright statement., 2013

Vivien Noakes has asserted the moral right to be identified as the editor of this work.

This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

EPUB ISBN
978 0 7524 9610 8

Original typesetting by The History Press

In memory of my uncle

2nd Lt Richard Langley,

13th Bttn, Alexandra, Princess of Wales’s Own Yorkshire Regiment,

The Green Howards.

Reported wounded and missing, 27 September 1916.

Reported missing believed killed, 25 October 1916.

His name appeared on a German list of prisoners of war,

8 December 1916.

He died as a consequence of his wounds, 16 July 1935.

For any anthologist, the first and greatest thanks must go to the writers whose work makes up the collection. The last survivor, Geoffrey Dearmer, died aged 103 in 1996; it was my great privilege to be at his hundredth birthday celebration at the Imperial War Museum in 1993. But for these men and women, there would be no
Voices of Silence
.

Catherine Riley’s
Bibliography of First World War Poetry
is indispensable to anyone searching for poems of the Great War. For their generous help I am grateful to: Colin Badcock; Emily Bird of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission; Anthony Boden; Mark Brown; Adrian Gregory; Jill, Duchess of Hamilton; Sally Harrower of the National Library of Scotland; William Hetherington of the Peace Pledge Union; Dominic Hibberd; Nigel Jaques; Colin Johnston, Principal Archivist of the Bath and North East Somerset Council; Michael Meredith; Joe Mulholland; Allen Packwood of the Churchill Archive Centre, Cambridge; Andrew Partridge; Robert Pike; Ann Riker; Nigel Steel; Dr David Sutton, Director of Research Projects at Reading University Library; Bill Turner; and Kevin Tye.

The staff of the following libraries have been most courteous and helpful: the British Library; the Newspaper Library, Collindale; Friends’ House; the Imperial War Museum Department of Documents and Library; the London Library; the Royal Air Force Museum.

For permission to use material that is still in copyright I would like to thank: Blackwell Publishing Ltd for ‘A Song of the Air’, ‘Reconnaissance’ and ‘Two Pictures’ by Gordon Alchin, ‘From the Youth of all Nations’ by Henry Cecil Harwood and ‘The Draft’ by A.P. Herbert; Mrs Anne Charlton for ‘Noon’ by Robert Nichols; Mrs Peregrine Spencer Churchill for ‘Y Beach’; Jonathan Cutbill for ‘Lieutenant Tattoon, M.C.’ by Edward Carpenter; Lord Elton for ‘The War Memorial’ by Godfrey Elton; Samuel French Ltd on behalf of the estate of John Drinkwater for ‘England to Belgium’ by John Drinkwater; Michael Gibson and Pan Macmillan for ‘Bacchanal’, ‘Between the Lines’, ‘Mad,’ ‘Ragtime’ and ‘The Messages’ by Wilfrid Gibson; Duff Hart-Davis for ‘The Song of the Mud’ by Mary Borden; Patrick W.H. Harvey for ‘A True Tale of the Listening Post’, ‘At Afternoon Tea’, ‘Back to the Trenches’, ‘Ballad of Army Pay’, ‘Gonnehem’, ‘Loneliness’, ‘Peace – The Dead Speak’, ‘Requiescat’, ‘The Route March’, ‘To Certain Persons’ and ‘To the Kaiser – Confidentially’ by F.W. Harvey; David Higham for ‘Tears’ by Osbert Sitwell; Mrs John Hills for ‘Valete’ by William Box; The Earl of Home for ‘The School at War – 1914’ by C.A. Alington; Jarrold & Sons Ltd for ‘For a Horse Flag Day’ by Jessie Anderson and ‘Dumb Heroes’ by T.A. Girling; the estate of Richard and Roger Lancelyn Green for ‘All Souls, 1914’ by Gordon Bottomley; Macmillan for ‘A Flemish Village’ by Herbert Asquith, ‘Meditation in June, 1917’, ‘On Trek’ and ‘The Old Soldiers’ by Edward Shanks and ‘In the Third Year of the War’ and ‘Return’ by E. Hilton Young; Mary Claire O’Donnell for ‘After Loos’, ‘I oft go out at night-time’, ‘In the Morning’ and ‘The Dawn’ by Patrick MacGill;
Punch
for ‘Oxford Revisited’ by Cyril Bretherton, ‘Requisitional’ by W. Hodgson Burnet, ‘The Infantryman’ by E.F. Clarke, ‘On Christmas Leave’ by W.W. Blair Fish, ‘Missing’ by Geraldine Robertson Glasgow, ‘Beasts and Superbeasts’, ‘The Freedom of the Press’, ‘The Missing Leader’ and ‘Winston’s Last Phase’ by Charles Graves, ‘Literary War Worker’ by T. Hodgkinson, ‘The Four Sea Lords’ by Richard Keigwin, ‘Mufti Once More’ by Edmund Knox, ‘The General’ by George Menzies, ‘From a Full Heart’ and ‘Gold Braid’ by A.A. Milne, ‘The Widow’ by C.M. Mitchell, ‘Verdun’ by F.W. Platt, ‘A Canadian to his Parents’, ‘My American Cousins’, ‘Raids’, ‘More Peace-Talk in Berlin’, ‘“Punch” in the Enemy Trenches’ and ‘The Soul of a Nation’ by C. Conway Plumbe, ‘Deportment for Women’ by Jessie Pope, ‘Another “Scrap of Paper”’ and ‘Model Dialogues for Air-raids’ by Owen Seamen, ‘A Vision of Blighty’ by J. Shirley, ‘To a Bad Correspondent in Camp’ by F.C. Walker; Stephen Rhys for ‘Lost in France’ by Ernest Rhys; John Shakespeare for ‘The Refugees’ and ‘Ypres Cathedral’ by William G. Shakespeare; Major James Cannan Slater for ‘English Leave’, ‘For a Girl’, ‘ Perfect Epilogue’ and ‘The Armistice’ by May Cannan; Sir Roy Strong for ‘Night Duty in the Station’, ‘The Menin Road’, ‘March 1919’ and ‘Unloading Ambulance Train’ by Carola Oman; A.P. Watt Ltd on behalf of Timothy d’Arch Smith for ‘Eyes in the Air’, ‘Gun-Teams’, Headquarters’, ‘Only an Officer’, ‘Poison’, ‘The Other Side’, ‘The Reason’, ‘Unknown’, ‘Urgent or Ordinary’ and ‘Wails to the Mail’ by Gilbert Frankau; Revd Juliet Woollcombe for ‘Gommecourt’ and ‘Mudros, After the Evacuation’ by Geoffrey Dearmer. ‘A Halt on the March’ by J.B. Priestley (Copyright © Estate of J.B. Priestly 1918) is reproduced by permission of PFD (
www.pfd.co.uk
) on behalf of the Estate of J.B. Priestley. I would also like to acknowledge the many anonymous authors whom it has been impossible to identify.

Every effort has been made to trace all the copyright holders, but if any has been inadvertently overlooked, the publisher will be pleased to make the necessary arrangements at the first opportunity.

It has been a joy to work with the staff at Sutton Publishing, particularly Christopher Feeney, Hilary Walford, Jane Entrican, Martin Latham, Mary Critchley, Yvette Cowles and Felicity Teague. Lastly, thank you to my husband, Michael Noakes, for his continued support.