Two Sonnets from Letters Home 1918

Xll

29 April. Many thanks for sending the typewriter. As we have been so busy I have not yet unpacked it, but hope we shall be in a quieter place soon when I know it will be most useful. It took a long time to reach me as it was going against the stream. You will be pleased to know I have not lost too many personal belongings, and keep the cigarette case with me always.

Father, I’ve had your gift of the gold cigarette case
out here with me from the start.
How I would have liked to see your face
the other day when it lay against my heart,
its slight curve fitting snug
in the breast pocket. Cantering along I felt a thump
from nowhere – no one had flung
a clod at me or shot from behind a stump
that I could see. The horse faltered
a moment, changed legs, I kicked him on
to reach our lines with news of altered
plans, rather than stop. The shock had gone
until when I dismounted, needing a smoke
I saw the bullet dent in the gold – war’s little joke!

XI

5 May. Of course, we lost a lot of stuff, but I doubt whether the Huns got it, as every place we left we used to shell like the Dickens half an hour later and when the Infantry left they set fire to various places. For some days and nights the countryside was a beautiful blaze, and ammo dumps going up were wonderful to watch.

What else can you do and how write home?
The habit of shielding them’s as stuck
as any gun in the mud. Fires lit the gloom
of having to retreat, over the dark
earth that’s rich with four years’ flesh and bone,
pieces of men, of horses, guns and shells
well mixed into the fiery pudding of ruin.
So I sent light firework reading home for the girls.
A third of our front collapsed
as Ludendorff rubbed his hands:
St George he calls his putsch that washed
over our quick and dead plans.
So what else to do but burn
and wait for the tides of war to turn?