Over the top, Poetry from the trenches

Flanders Field

Forward we march

Upon the eve of battle

Voices singing songs of glory

Mud filling our boots

Upon the eve of battle

We sit deep in filth filled trenches

Mud filling our boots

Waiting for the whistle

We sit deep in filth filled trenches

Peering into No Man’s Land

Waiting for the whistle

Knuckles white on our rifles

Peering into No Man’s Land

Artillery screaming o’er our heads

Knuckles white on our rifles

Machine guns chattering like giant teeth

Artillery screaming o’er our heads

Dirt covered corpses thrown in the air

Machine guns chattering like giant teeth

Dirty brown gas creeping into the trench

Dirt covered corpses thrown in the air

Eyes burning, we grab for our masks

Dirty brown gas creeping into the trench

Choking and gasping we struggle to live

Eyes burning, we grab for our masks

Blinded, each lungful of air burning

Choking and gasping we struggle to live

We stumble and falter unseeing

Blinded, each lungful of air burning

Voices singing songs of glory

We stumble and falter unseeing

Forward we march

This poem is of my own creation, based on the works of Siegfried Sassoon, whose works I devoured as a kid. In fourth grade my teacher had a collection of books on her desk that were written by Sassoon, and I would secretly read them during class, ignoring the ways to tell time or the simple math problems placed upon the board and read instead the horrors of war and the struggles of those in the trenches. ever since then i have enjoyed the poems of Sassoon and those like him, depicting a world that I could not imagine, but only attempt to picture. This was a man who won a Victoria Cross only to throw it into a lake and get put in an insane asylum when he tried to speak out against the war. His poems moved me and I wanted to write what he did, depicting the horrors of war. so i leave you with the poem that first inspired me.

"The rank stench of those bodies haunts me still"
The rank stench of those bodies haunts me still
And I remember things I'd best forget.
For now we've marched to a green, trenchless land
Twelve miles from battering guns: along the grass
Brown lines of tents are hives for snoring men;
Wide, radiant water sways the floating sky
Below dark, shivering trees. And living-clean
Comes back with thoughts of home and hours of sleep.
To-night I smell the battle; miles away
Gun-thunder leaps and thuds along the ridge;
The spouting shells dig pits in fields of death,
And wounded men, are moaning in the woods.
If any friend be there whom I have loved,
God speed him safe to England with a gash.
It's sundown in the camp; some youngster laughs,
Lifting his mug and drinking health to all
Who come unscathed from that unpitying waste:
(Terror and ruin lurk behind his gaze.)
Another sits with tranquil, musing face,
Puffing bis pipe and dreaming of the girl
Whose last scrawled letter lies upon his knee.
The sunlight falls, low-ruddy from the west,
Upon their heads. Last week they might have died
And now they stretch their limbs in tired content.
One says 'The bloody Bosche has got the knock;
'And soon they'll crumple up and chuck their games.
'We've got the beggars on the run at last!'
Then I remembered someone that I'd seen
Dead in a squalid, miserable ditch,
Heedless of toiling feet that trod him down.
He was a Prussian with a decent face,
Young, fresh, and pleasant, so 1 dare to say.
No doubt he loathed the war and longed for peace,
And cursed our souls because we'd killed bis friends.
One night he yawned along a haIf-dug trench
Midnight; and then the British guns began
With heavy shrapnel bursting low, and 'hows'
Whistling to cut the wire with blinding din.
He didn't move; the digging still went on;
Men stooped and shovelled; someone gave a grunt,
And moaned and died with agony in the sludge.
Then the long hiss of shells lifted and stopped.
He stared into the gloom; a rocket curved,
And rifles rattled angrily on the left
Down by the wood, and there was noise of bombs.
Then the damned English loomed in scrambling haste
Out of the dark and struggled through the wire,
And there were shouts and eurses; someone screamed
And men began to blunder down the trench
Without their rifles. It was time to go:
He grabbed his coat; stood up, gulping some bread;
Then clutched his head and fell.
I found him there
In the gray morning when the place was held.
His face was in the mud; one arm flung out
As when he crumpled up; his sturdy legs
Were bent beneath bis trunk; heels to the skye.

                                           Sassoon