Originally celebrated as Armistice Day, since 1954 November 11 has been recognized as Veterans’ Day in the United States to acknowledge and honor the service of all veterans. The United States doesn’t remember World War I (it was called The Great War at the time because no one knew that we would have to number World Wars) in the way it remembers World War II. US forces were involved in the fighting in World War I for only about seven months, and the nation suffered only 116,000 deaths (.13% of the population), while the UK suffered almost 900,000 deaths (2.19% of the population) over the four years they were involved in the war. Tim and I were in the UK in September of this year, and we saw memorials to the WWI dead in every village and every church we visited. It is part of the past but also in the living memory of people who lost grandparents and other family members in that conflagration.
When you teach American History, WWI gets short shrift. There was no time to talk about shifting alliances, military strategy, or specific battled. I tried to teach this war in a way that captured the emotion associated with it, even though the impact on the American population was minimal. I found I could reach my students by focusing on the WWI poets – primarily British (although there were some Canadians and Americans) – whose dark poetry captured the horror of war in ways that newspapers and even photos cannot.
Tim was teaching middle-school American history while I was teaching in high school, and he also used the World War I poets in his class. He went further – he simulated trench warfare in his classroom. He lined up the desks against the side walls of his classroom and had his students crouch behind the lines of desks. When he gave the signal, they began to pelt the other side with wads of paper. He walked behind them with a spray mist bottle, and shouted “Gas! Gas!” as he lightly sprayed water over them. He rattled tin pie pans to simulate the roar of cannons and gunfire. Then he told his students to write a letter home, describing what was going on. I don’t think this generated any high-quality poetry, but I think the kids in his class remember the World War I poets.
We focused on several poets. I want to tell you about them.
John McCrae was a Canadian-born surgeon who had seen combat in the 1899 Boer War in Africa.
He joined a Canadian unit at the beginning of World War I. I start with him because his poem, In Flanders Field, is the reason the poppy is the popular image of the Armistice that ended this war. He died of pneumonia in 1918. Here’s how the poem goes:
In Flanders fields the poppies blow Between the crosses, row on row, That mark our place; and in the sky The larks, still bravely singing, fly Scarce heard amid the guns below. We are the Dead. Short days ago We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow, Loved and were loved, and now we lie, In Flanders fields. Take up our quarrel with the foe: To you from failing hands we throw The torch; be yours to hold it high. If ye break faith with us who die We shall not sleep, though poppies grow In Flanders fields.
Wilfrid Owen, an Englishman, enlisted in 1915 and was sent to the western front in January 2017.
He was hospitalized with shell shock, but returned to the western front in 1918. He was killed on November 4, 1918. News of his death reached his parents on Armistice Day. He was 25. I’m going to let you read his poem Dulce et Decorum Est.
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge, Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs, And towards our distant rest began to trudge. Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots, But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind; Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots Of gas-shells dropping softly behind. Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time, But someone still was yelling out and stumbling And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime.— Dim through the misty panes and thick green light, As under a green sea, I saw him drowning. In all my dreams before my helpless sight, He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning. If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace Behind the wagon that we flung him in, And watch the white eyes writhing in his face, His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin; If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs, Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,— My friend, you would not tell with such high zest To children ardent for some desperate glory, The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori.
The last line translates “It is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country.” Owen didn’t think so.
Rupert Brooke, once described as “the handsomest young man in England,” Brooke was an established poet before the war begin.
He was commissioned as a Royal Navy officer in 1914. His most well-known poem, The Soldier, was part of a series of five war sonnets. Brooke died at the age of 27 from an infected mosquito bite while he was at sea in the spring of 1915 while awaiting deployment in the Allied invasion of the Gallipoli Peninsula. Here’s how this poem goes.
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; A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware, Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam; A body of England’s, breathing English air, Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home. And think, this heart, all evil shed away, A pulse in the eternal mind, no less Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given; Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day; And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness, In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.
Siegfried Sassoon enlisted as a second lieutenant in May of 1915. Originally an ambitious model soldier, he is remembered for his incendiary antiwar writing.
Sassoon survived the war – unlike most of the other World War I poets – living until 1967 as a passionate opponent of war. One of his best-known poems is The General.
“Good-morning, good-morning!” the General said When we met him last week on our way to the line. Now the soldiers he smiled at are most of 'em dead, And we're cursing his staff for incompetent swine. “He's a cheery old card,” grunted Harry to Jack As they slogged up to Arras with rifle and pack. But he did for them both by his plan of attack.
Rudyard Kipling is not widely remembered as a World War I poet, but the war impacted both his writing and his life.
Too old to enlist when war broke out in 1914, Kipling’s writing initially fueled Britain’s propaganda machine. He encouraged his only son John to join up – but John was declared missing in action in 1915. His body was never found and Kipling never learned what happened to him. This poem, My Boy Jack, was ostensibly written in response to the death of a 16-year-old sailor Jack Cornwell, but was viewed by many as referring to Kipling’s own lost son.
“Have you news of my boy Jack? ” Not this tide. “When d’you think that he’ll come back?” Not with this wind blowing, and this tide. “Has any one else had word of him?” Not this tide. For what is sunk will hardly swim, Not with this wind blowing, and this tide. “Oh, dear, what comfort can I find?” None this tide, Nor any tide, Except he did not shame his kind— Not even with that wind blowing, and that tide. Then hold your head up all the more, This tide, And every tide; Because he was the son you bore, And gave to that wind blowing and that tide!
Alan Seeger, born in 1888, was twenty-two when this photograph was taken while he was a student at Harvard in 1910.
Seeger spent two years in the French Foreign Legion; as an American citizen he could not join the French military, so he did the next best thing and joined the Legion, since the United States had not yet entered the war against the Central Powers.
After graduating from Harvard in 1910, Seeger had lived for two years in Greenwich Village where he wrote poetry and enjoyed the life of a young bohemian. The poetry he wrote then and while he was at the front was not published until 1917, a year after his death. Seeger died (ironically on July 4th) in the attack on Belloy-en-Santerre, where he was shot in the stomach. Following his death, the French military awarded him the Croix de Guerre and the Médaille militaire. He was buried in a mass grave. His poem, Rendevous, anticipated his own death.
I have a rendezvous with Death At some disputed barricade, I have a rendezvous with Death At some disputed barricade, When Spring comes back with rustling shade And apple-blossoms fill the air-- I have a rendezvous with Death When Spring brings back blue days and fair. It may be he shall take my hand And lead me into his dark land And close my eyes and quench my breath-- It may be I shall pass him still. I have a rendezvous with Death On some scarred slope of battered hill, When Spring comes round again this year And the first meadow-flowers appear. God knows 'twere better to be deep Pillowed in silk and scented down, Where love throbs out in blissful sleep, Pulse nigh to pulse, and breath to breath, Where hushed awakenings are dear . . . But I've a rendezvous with Death At midnight in some flaming town, When Spring trips north again this year, And I to my pledged word am true, I shall not fail that rendezvous.
Not all of the World War I poets were men. Margaret Postgate Cole was a pacifist in the First World War but an active supporter of the Second World War.
Her best-known poem is The Veteran.
We came upon him sitting in the sun Blinded by war, and left. And past the fence There came young soldiers from the Hand and Flower, Asking advice of his experience. And he said this, and that, and told them tales, And all the nightmares of each empty head Blew into air; then, hearing us beside, "Poor chaps, how'd they know what it's like?" he said. And we stood there, and watched him as he sat, Turning his sockets where they went away, Until it came to one of us to ask "And you're-how old?" "Nineteen, the third of May."
Each of these poets wrote more poems, and there were many other World War I poets, but these were the ones I focused on. I found that my students understand the gravity of this war through these poems. If you want to read more of this poetry, you can find it here. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/70139/the-poetry-of-world-war-i
Veterans’ Day is a good day to read this poetry. Military service is about valor and courage and heroism. But it is also about terror and carnage and loss. Blood-red poppies remind us of this.
So glad you honored this day with this post. Meaningful and worth the read.