Poetry for Teens. Lesson Plans. Resources for Teachers. Academy of American Poets. American Poets Magazine. Poems Find and share the perfect poems. In Flanders Fields. This poem is in the public domain. Unsolved Amid my books I lived the hurrying years, Disdaining kinship with my fellow man; Alike to me were human smiles and tears, I cared not whither Earth's great life-stream ran, Till as I knelt before my mouldered shrine, God made me look into a woman's eyes; And I, who thought all earthly wisdom mine, Knew in a moment that the eternal skies Were measured but in inches, to the quest That lay before me in that mystic gaze.
John McCrae Rondo The noun one keeps batting away refuses declension. The exuberance in the present tense, the timebound blood pump two throbbing lungs butt in their bone cage surges to bursting. He does not perdure in this internal defection: so rare, and so heroic. Janet Holmes Academy of American Poets Educator Newsletter. Teach This Poem. We do not get much sleep at nights, but in the day time you would not think there is a war on.
We are about yards from the German line and in places nearer than that. There was a big bombardment along our lines last night. The Northants blew a mine up, and it was a sight to behold, but I do not know if anyone was killed or not. It is very clean in the trenches right now. I am writing this in my little dugout, which is nice and comfortable.
We have been in the trenches 13 days, and we do not know when we are coming out, but I hope it will not be long — we soon get fed up with it, because we have not got any amusement. By early November, conditions had deteriorated considerably, with wet weather making a quagmire of the trenches. What do you say? It begins to get cold out here now and I bet in another month or two we shall be having it properly. We have received at odd intervals, gifts of tobacco from newspaper funds etc.
As regards comforts from Bedford Regiment Fund, I would suggest that socks are far and away the most useful form; gloves and pipes are also acceptable….
For a year and a half we have given up our homes and our barns for the billeting of officers and men, retaining but one living and one bedroom for our own use. All our chattels, implements, carts, harnesses, horses were utilised by the army for defence purposes and in the bad old days we personally drove the wounded from the trenches to the base hospitals…. We are fighting for our homes, which will be wrecked if we abandon them….
During Christmas week the Battalion, being luckily out of the trenches, held a platoon football competition, the semi-finals being as follows: Seven Platoon v Snipers; and Eight Platoon v Twelve Platoon C Company. A subscription was got up among the officers of the Battalion for the winners and runners up. It was decided by the Captains of both teams who by the way are brothers, from Bristol to hold a supper, which was held this time out of the trenches, followed by a concert which took place at 4.
By the way, football practice is rather difficult here, as teams have to wait their turns for the ball, there being only two balls in the Battalion.
If any reader could send us a football, it would be appreciated by all of B Company. Christmas Day: Very quiet. Enemy showed no signs of wishing to fraternize. If they do, troops have orders to fire at once.
Our men in billets had special Christmas dinners, etc. Boxing Day : Our artillery carried out a fairly extensive bombardment of enemy front-line trenches and houses in south end of Fricourt. We withdrew men from left half of front trenches during bombardment. The occasion was the first appearance of some heavier guns on our part of the line. Unlike almost all other units in the Division, the 7th Beds had not even been allowed to enter a canteen, nor did the 7th Beds even own such a place…. Why is that?
Surely we have done our bit and hope to do it again? I think the people at home ought to wake up and realize the position we are in at present. Surely we deserve a little comfort? Its pages perhaps reveal most, in what would prove to be a challenging year for both Clegg, the 7th Bedfordshires and the British Army on the Somme. January witnessed continued German mining activities and daily artillery, mortar and rifle grenade bombardments all along the D1 Sector.
One such attack with trench mortars on the evening of January 21st struck a C Company dugout according to the War Diary in Trench 77 in which four men were sheltering, instantly killing two of those inside. Dear Sir,. It is with great sorrow that I have to inform you that your son, Sgt H Pestell, was killed in action on 21st Jan inst. I am in command of C Company and in the death of Sgt Pestell we have lost a brave and excellent Sgt, one who has been an example of devotion and duty, cheerful and uncomplaining, even under trying circumstances.
Men of his stamp are hard to find, and, I personally, am very grieved at his death. It may be some comfort to know that his death was practically instantaneous. With sincerest sympathy,. Believe me,. Yours very truly. Ernest Clegg, Capt. One wonders how many similar letters Clegg must have written, how many times he must have sought to convey his own sense of personal grief and sorrow, perhaps not so effusively as his fellow officer Lt Hine, but nonetheless each time probably dying a little more inside, in recounting the loss of yet another young man under his command, comrades in arms whose lives had been so randomly, unfairly and prematurely cut short.
In February, the Battalion retired to La Houssoye, near Corbie, for rest and recreation, after what Sjt Hassall of O Company, described as one of the most trying times since landing in France , adding somewhat fatalistically that there are some of us still think ourselves lucky in still being in the land of the living, for what with cannisters, whiz-bangs and bullets one never knows when the end may come… letter to Bedford Times , 3rd March Matches continued every afternoon for a week.
The raiders spread lachyrmatory fluid along the German parapet to create a gas barrage and during their half hour in the German front trenches exploded Mills bombs in some fifteen German dugouts, causing numerous casualties and extensive damage. Brigadier-General Shoubridge, now Commander of 54th Brigade, noted that: t he success of the raid greatly improved the general morale.
Only a few of our men were wounded, and the whole party successfully returned to our lines. Conditions in the frontline trenches at Carnoy trenches were described by Corporal J Partridge, of the 7th Beds Signal Section, in April in a letter published in The Bedford Times of 21st April describing swarms of wretched rats :.
I looked like a frightened nipper hiding from ghosts, I guess. I woke up with a start you can guess, and they flew all roads round the dugout. I put my hand up to my nose and it was covered in blood. I saw the doctor to see if I was likely to be poisoned. He put some stuff on…My officer ordered wire netting very small mesh to be put all round the dugout to keep them out, so things will not be so bad.
I tell you they were beginning to get on my nerves. Or his companion Tom the Tunneller , two veteran monsters who, according to the 18th Division History, were familiar figures in the Bedfordshires trenches and evaded all attempts at capture. It became the unofficial duty of the orderly officer of the day to effect a daily rat cull. In early May, Clegg was himself sent off to Brigade training school at Oissy, and later in the month assumed temporary command of the Battalion, during the leave of the then commanding Officer, Major G P Mills.
Thereby Clegg was himself also officially promoted to the rank of temporary Major, as announced in the London Gazette of May 17th. It is at this point that Clegg has surely one of the strangest experiences of any British Army officer then in service on the Western Front. He would have seen some of the first ever medically advanced dressing station scenes of men coming back from the battle suffering from the effects of the poison gas.
McCrae, a very well educated and respected doctor born in Guelph, Ontario in , had volunteered to serve when the Dominion of Canada was thrust into the war. He had fought for the British Empire as an artillery officer in the Second Boer War, in the middle of a very prestigious medical career that included service as expedition physician on a canoe trip to Hudson Bay with Lord Grey, the Governor General of Canada in Lieutenant Alexis Helmer was killed on the front lines outside the Flemish town of Ypres at the beginning of May He was the friend of McCrae whose death is cited as the inspiration for the famous poem.
On the hollowed ground many poppies were growing, fertilized by the dead, a common occurrence in the region and written about in descriptions of recent burial grounds from wars past. It is said that McCrae was unhappy with the poem and threw it out after he wrote it, only for it to be rescued from the rubbish by friends who later convinced him to publish it.
Before long, McCrae was revealed as the author and showered with praise. The poem was used as propaganda to recruit volunteers and sell war bonds.
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