WW2 poetry

My daughter Alexandra is 13 a fine and happy grandaughter of tank commander on one side and Estonian war refugee on other. She has due respect for all this. She is doing war poetry at school and whilst I can give her any number of WW1 poems I have to say good WW2 poetry has escaped me. Any thoughts on this would be gratefully received. Particularly if any of our Veterans have ever given house room to any poetry (I know what my pa would have said...) I would love to know

 

One of the most famous poems - written during WWII.

The life that I have
Is all that I have
And the life that I have
Is yours

The love that I have
Of the life that I have
Is yours and yours and yours

A sleep I shall have
A rest I shall have
Yet death will be but a pause

For the peace of my years
In the long green grass
Will be yours and yours
And yours

The Life That I Have - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

A couple of names to get you going:

John Jarmain : War Poetry: John Jarmain

Keith Douglas : War Poetry: Keith Douglas

 

High Flight
by John Gillespie Magee, Jr.


Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth

And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;

Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth

Of sun-split clouds...and done a hundred things

You have not dreamed of...wheeled and soared and swung

High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there,

I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung

My eager craft through footless halls of air.

Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue

I've topped the windswept heights with easy grace

Where never lark, or even eagle flew.

And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod

The high untrespassed sanctity of space

Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gillespie_Magee,_Jr.

 

Indeed it is Violette Szarbos code poem. Written by the man who sent her into the field Leo Marks

See link

Marks, Leo - Code Poem

 

High Flight
by John Gillespie Magee, Jr.


Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth

And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;

Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth

Of sun-split clouds...and done a hundred things

You have not dreamed of...wheeled and soared and swung

High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there,

I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung

My eager craft through footless halls of air.

Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue

I've topped the windswept heights with easy grace

Where never lark, or even eagle flew.

And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod

The high untrespassed sanctity of space

Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gillespie_Magee,_Jr.


That is beautiful. Glad my daughter has this project if only to find this

 

Susan thread below is very interesting

http://www.ww2talk.com/forum/barracks/6748-war-poetry.html

James Farrar
A young RAF navigator who was killed while attempting to destroy a V1 .He was only 20 when he died.He was one of the most promising writers of his generation and his work was published in "The Unreturning Spring " in 1950.


Poem from September 1940 (when he was 16) Written whilst watching dogfights during the Battle of Britain

I walk endlessly, no clock drips by the hours,
The burnished hedgerows, clotted and high,
The still woods, the dead meadows, the closed flowers,
Shrunken under that bright scarred sky.
A light-play, as of sun on August leaves,
A height-soft moan, a wooden intermittent rattle,
And, as the scrollèd conflict eastward weaves,
Feelers drooping darkly out of battle.
They come slowly, soft tap-roots questing down,
At the groping tip of one glisters a bead of light:
I see them, like waterflies struggling not to drown,
Soundlessly pass into earth, and meet night.

 

I write many war poems having taken part in the greatest battles.



Les Fleurs de Normandie.


On Norman soil, they fought and died.


Now young men's graves in rows abound.


In Mother Earth's arms, now sanctified,


The fragrant flowers of our youth are found.


And yet, to rise again, as in a distant song.


Small voices that call, in dead of night.


Fleeting figures only in our dreams belong.


Alas, they fade, in dawn's bright light.


I see them yet, a sad, forgotten throng.


Shadowed, lost faces, marching on.


Over dusty roads, and high golden corn.


The call of long lost friends are borne.


We must not forget, the flowers of our days,


Lest they lay unquiet, in numbered graves.


For we lived, and loved, and life was sweet.


Still yet, for us, awaits our last retreat.


Flowers of our youth, now long since past.


Our sweet autumn days are fading fast.


We, who are left, flowered in our prime.


Enjoyed golden moments, on borrowed time.


Remember our friends, who passed this way.


For all our tomorrow's, they gave their today's,


On Utah and Omaha, Juno, Sword and Gold.


Oh! Dear Lord! See that they grow not old.


Brian Guy.


June. 1944/2010
Dedicated to all those young men that never came home.


I am Brian Guy, lately of 246 Field Company Royal Engineers. An Assaulting unit of the Third British Infantry Division; Monty’s Ironsides.


From the Fields of Normandy I bring back many memories.


Beneath them. I leave many friends,


For they are;


Les Fleurs de Normandie.


The Flowers of Normandy

 

Quietly! Quietly! Whisper my Name.

So many long years ago I died, under Norman apple trees.
But now my Spirit wanders, as a warm and gentle breeze.
Hush! Quietly, Whisper my name, in that long forgotten place.
Then feel the warmth of my Spirit, caress lightly on your face.

For now, I am the jewelled Summer Lark, that soars on high.
Bright in heavens concert hall, my song will fill the sky.
I am the tumbling cloud’s that rise, to touch the face of Joy.
No longer held by earthly bonds, a once young and vital boy.

In an instant life was swept away, in a brutal savage war.
Look not for me in Normandy, for I am there no more.
I am the peace in woodland glades, in veiled cascades of green.
Feel me close, in your times of joy, sensed, but never seen.

Whisper my name, and hear my voice, in cascading woodland spring,
Or England's flowered primrose banks, wherein the bluebells ring.
Don’t mourn for me, quietly call my name, I'll visit in your dreams.
And, fill your mind with the beauty, of heavens joyous scenes.

Hush! Hush! Just whisper, quietly, call my name.
Whisper quietly.

Brian Guy.

 

I write many war poems having taken part in the greatest battles.



Les Fleurs de Normandie.



On Norman soil, they fought and died.


Now young men's graves in rows abound.


In Mother Earth's arms, now sanctified,


The fragrant flowers of our youth are found.



And yet, to rise again, as in a distant song.


Small voices that call, in dead of night.


Fleeting figures only in our dreams belong.


Alas, they fade, in dawn's bright light.



I see them yet, a sad, forgotten throng.


Shadowed, lost faces, marching on.


Over dusty roads, and high golden corn.


The call of long lost friends are borne.



We must not forget, the flowers of our days,


Lest they lay unquiet, in numbered graves.


For we lived, and loved, and life was sweet.


Still yet, for us, awaits our last retreat.



Flowers of our youth, now long since past.


Our sweet autumn days are fading fast.


We, who are left, flowered in our prime.


Enjoyed golden moments, on borrowed time.



Remember our friends, who passed this way.


For all our tomorrow's, they gave their today's,


On Utah and Omaha, Juno, Sword and Gold.


Oh! Dear Lord! See that they grow not old.


Brian Guy.


June. 1944/2010

Dedicated to all those young men that never came home.


I am Brian Guy, lately of 246 Field Company Royal Engineers. An Assaulting unit of the Third British Infantry Division; Monty’s Ironsides.



From the Fields of Normandy I bring back many memories.


Beneath them. I leave many friends,


For they are;


Les Fleurs de Normandie.



The Flowers of Normandy
Thank you so much. I recall for ever my father Brian as padre 8th Army Association leading the words of remembrance in the wind and rain of Blackpool his body half paralysed from his last wounds at Saltou and knowing everyone there (including Rommel and Monty's sons standing side by side) knowing these were words truly meant.

 

Susan, thank you for starting this thread.
May it go from strength to strength,
soaring on the endless breath of time,
forever and always
filling our hearts with in memoria rhyme.
Les

 

As I may have bored a few of you-my father was an RTR Sqaudron 2i/c on D day to a fine soldier called Major Robert Crisp. His book "Brazen Chariots" dealing with Operation Crusader in late 1941 contains the following:-

In the afternoon the leading tanks ran on to another anti-tank screen which this time the brigadier was content to engage with the 25 pounders. C squadron was not concerned in the afternoon performance and I took the opportunity to glance again at the papers I have found (in an abandoned Matilda tank earlier in the day). There were several sheets of poetry and had obviously been recently composed in the desert. This was one of them

THE SHELL

The silver scream comes nearer
faster than wind
faster than sound
It is the song of a new born thing
Singing her joy that she lives at last


Her life is short, too short
But joyous more than many million things
She droops to die so soon
For now she cries no more from joy
But in her agony of death her scream has changed to one of fear


She falls to earth
-and theres a breathless hush upon the land
For death is near

For in this particle of tiny time
Her fear is caught by those nearby
And stomachs turn and fingers twitch
And then within her agony of death she leaves the world

She leaves it with a cry, a shout, a trumpet call
That brings a terror to your heart
And death flies all around

Her grave stands open to the sky
And there she lies together with
the shattered limbs and bleedings mouth
And eyes that never more shall see

This poem was later found to be by Capt Browne RTR who was taken prisoner

 

Poem by a Mr Weber:

We knew it was our last and only chance
To leave that God forsaken bloodied beach
Escaping from the shot up shore of France
And the dread Stukas rattling reach
Now at last we were safely all aboard
That sturdy yacht The Sprite her timbers tight
Her sails they slapped the rough sea rudely roared
She'd to Englands bravely bear us that night
Plus two hundred and fifty thousand men
In more small boats than ever seen before
Were taken from out that festering wen
That was nineteen forties Dunkirk shore
Brave Captains in whose doubtless courage lay
Facility to fight another day

 

Would agree with Paul - this is one I am very fond of.

El Alamein

There are flowers now, they say, at El Alamein;
Yes, flowers in the minefields now.
So those that come to view that vacant scene,
Where death remains and agony has been
Will find the lilies grow ---
Flowers, and nothing that we know.

So they rang the bells for us and Alamein,
Bells which we could not hear.
And to those that heard the bells what could it mean,
The name of loss and pride, El Alamein?
--- Not the murk and harm of war,
But their hope, their own warm prayer.

It will become a staid historic name,
That crazy sea of sand!
Like Troy or Agincourt its single fame
Will be the garland for our brow, our claim,
On us a fleck of glory to the end;
And there our dead will keep their holy ground.

But this is not the place that we recall,
The crowded desert crossed with foaming tracks,
The one blotched building, lacking half a wall,
The grey-faced men, sand-powdered over all;
The tanks, the guns, the trucks,
The black, dark-smoking wrecks.

So be it; none but us has known that land;
El Alamein will still be only ours
And those ten days of chaos in the sand.
Others will come who cannot understand,
Will halt beside the rusty minefield wires
And find there, flowers.

 

Like others on this thread I am a great admirer of Keith Douglas and have recited his poems on various occasions. Douglas was a tank commander in the Nottinghamshire Yeomanry during the later stages of the North African campaign (described in his classic memoir 'Alamein to Zem Zem'). He was killed by a mortar bomb in Normandy on 9th June 1944. I read one of his last works, 'Soldiers Waiting in the Wings of Europe' at his graveside on our 2001 School Battlefields tour. Two of his greatest poems, 'Aristocrats' and 'Vergissmeinicht' ('Forget-Me-Not') were written about the North African Campaign. 'Vergissmeinicht' was read on a recent edition of Radio 4's 'Poetry Please' and praised by Roger McGough as one of the finest poems in English written during the war.

Vergissmeinnicht


Three weeks gone and the combatants gone
returning over the nightmare ground
we found the place again, and found
the soldier sprawling in the sun.

The frowning barrel of his gun
overshadowing. As we came on
that day, he hit my tank with one
like the entry of a demon.

Look. Here in the gunpit spoil
the dishonoured picture of his girl
who has put: Steffi. Vergissmeinnicht.
in a copybook gothic script.

We see him almost with content,
abased, and seeming to have paid
and mocked at by his own equipment
that's hard and good when he's decayed.

But she would weep to see today
how on his skin the swart flies move;
the dust upon the paper eye
and the burst stomach like a cave.

For here the lover and killer are mingled
who had one body and one heart.
And death who had the soldier singled
has done the lover mortal hurt.

Keith Douglas

 

One of the best English (Cornish!) poets of our time, Charles Causley (1917-2003). His poem AT THE BRITISH WAR CEMETERY, BAYEUX is on line:

At the British War Cemetery, Bayeux by Charles Causley - Poetry Archive

There is also a reading and some commentary by the poet himself on the link.

 

I write all my own. This is a recent dedication Susan.

The Comradeship of Death.

After the hurricane of war has passed. There are no friends or foe.
Amongst the grotesque figures of the dead, no poppies ever grow.
For in that comradeship of death, wherein the mangled bodies lay,
Uniforms of khaki and grey, lay silent. Patiently waiting for decay.


Around the shell and mortar holes, in the killing zone they wait.
The trials of all the young men, now war has decided on their fate.
Pictures of family and children, mouldering and rotting in the rain.
At home the loss of loved ones, the agony of grieving, and of pain.


The comradeship of death has no enemies, for all of that is past.
Now they lay in a deathly hush. for them, peace has come at last.
Amongst the hedgerows, sad, but familiar khaki shapes are found.
Mother nature reclaims her sons, as they melt back in the ground.


Over the years their lost voices call “Remember me, call my name”
We are the brotherhood of death. of the land from whence we came
On short dark Summer nights, listen! hear the lonely voices call,
Beneath the Earth, the soft warm earth we lie, for now it is our pall.


When all the tears are shed, we still remain: the comradeship of death
Freedom is won by sacrifices. by men who fight, till that final breath.
No enemy has walked here upon, the beauty of Britain’s sacred Land.
Freedoms a gift, from the comradeship of deaths glorious heroic band.

Brian Guy October 2009

　
　
　
　
　

 

Here are a selection of poems etc from a special compilation edition of SPEARHEAD, British 1 Corps Newsletter (published between D+5 and VE Day)