Poet – Wilhelm Klemm
He was born in Leipzig and began writing poetry whilst at school. He was to become a poet, publisher as well as a doctor. He completed his medical studies in Munich in 1905 and after his father’s death in 1909 he took his book business. He married Erna Kroner daughter of the publisher Alfred Kroner in 1912. He was called up for military service as an army surgeon in early August 1914, serving in general von Hausen’s Third Army in Flanders. He left for the front on 10 August 1914. He was greatly affected by his experiences as a field surgeon and at 33 he did not suffer from delusional glory.
Much of his poetry appeared in Die Aktion which was edited by Franz Pfemfert who was anti-war. It was a literary and political magazine published between 1911 and 1932 in Berlin-Wilmersdorf. It promoted literary Expressionism. Die Aktion published its anti-war anthology titled 1914-1916 in 1916, the publication being against the war even before it broke out. During the war Die Aktion’s anti-war stance was uncompromising regularly publishing poems by English writers such as Rupert Brook which were translated for the German readership.
Klemm’s war poetry, published in die Aktion, dates from a relatively short period of 21 November 1914 to 20 March 1915, his later poetry barely mentions the war and speaks predominantly of peace. As a surgeon his world of constant grimness probably burnt him out and this is apparent by the fact that all his poems were written before 1915 before fatigue and exhaustion took hold and probably to keep sane he wrote about the world of peace.
Klemm survived the war and in 1921 he took over his father-in-law’s publishing firm and purchased a book shop in 1927. He published an edition of Karl Marx’s early writings in 1932. In 1937 he was expelled from the Writer’s Chamber by the Nazi’s. He edited the Dietrich collection, a series of philosophical, cultural and literary editions which were published, after the Second World War, in the DDR and in Wiesbaden where he lived. He died in Wiesbaden in 1968.
Poem – Clearing Station
Clearing Station
Straw rustling everywhere.
Candle-stumps solemnly stare.
Across the nocturnal vault of the church,
moans and muffled words go drifting.
There is a stench of blood, filth, rot, sweat.
Dressings ooze under torn uniforms.
Clammy, trembling hands and ruined faces.
Bodies rest propped upright but their dead heads loll.
In the distance the battle thunders on.
Day and night, groaning and grumbling.
To the dying, waiting patiently for their graves,
it must echo in their ears like the voice of God. (2)
Painting – Ypres – Gilbert Rogers
Gilbert Rogers enlisted as a Private in the Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC) on 5th November 1915 aged 34 and was immediately sent to the RAMC Training Camp in Eastbourne. He then completed pre-deployment training in Codford, Wiltshire and joined ‘N’ Company, 35 Coy RAMC. In 1918 he was tasked with managing a group of RAMC private soldiers, all professional artists to document the medical history of the war and the war work of the RAMC. In July 1918 he returned to France in this capacity, to brief artists, choose locations and to make preparatory drawings for his own work. On their return from the front, the artists worked from studios in Fulham in London and produced approximately six hundred paintings, sculptures and models featuring war work both at home and overseas. Gilbert Rogers was awarded a Military MBE in the Peace Gazette of June 1919 for his work on this art project. After producing his most memorable works during this war period, he ceased to paint for the rest of his life.
Evacuation and Treatment of the Wounded
In addition to the many camps and gun sites around Poperinghe there were also the Main Dressing Stations and Casualty Clearing Stations. By 1917, the Royal Army Medical Corps had an established evacuation pathway for the wounded from the frontline all the way back to the base hospitals on the French coast, and onward to establishments in Britain such as the hospitals in Falkirk. Getting to these aid stations after being wounded was a different story. When troops went forward into the attack the wounded would be left to be collected by the stretcher bearers and the battlefield conditions meant that it could take several hours to reach an aid post.
Private William Scott, 1/7 Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders wrote home to his parents at 95 Wallace Street, Falkirk, of his experience as a stretcher bearer during the catastrophic attack by the 10th Brigade on 25 April 1915 at St Julian. He was wounded in the hand and knee and was himself hospitalised he wrote of the ‘one or two miles’ the stretcher bearers had to carry the wounded down to the Advance Dressing Station. Another Falkirk man Private Andrew McKerracher was a stretcher bearer with the 35th Field Ambulance, Regimental Aid Post located at Minty Farm during Third Ypres, and was killed by shell fire.
The Casualty Clearing Station (CCS) was commanded by a RAMC Lt Colonel. He had a staff of specialist surgeons, and medical support staff which included: eight Medical Officers, a Quartermaster, seven Queen Alexandra’s Imperial Military Nursing Service (Nurses), and seventy seven other ranks such as: clerks, cooks, nursing orderlies, theatre orderlies, stretcher-bearers etc. There was also a dentist and a pathologist attached with non-medical personnel made up of three chaplains, four lorry drivers, two Royal Engineers an electrician and engine hand, and men from the Army Service Corps, employed as ambulance drivers.
The CCS had three roles:
1. The most important was that the CCS was the site were the major limb and life-saving surgery was carried out.
2. They were sites for the assessment of minor wounds to be treated before they were sent back to the front line.
3. The CCS’s assessed casualties with wounds that were safe to be put on hospital trains and sent back to base hospitals for the final surgery.
A CCS could be found anywhere from 8 to 15 miles from the front line. Brandhoek CCS, which had opened in mid-1915, was located less than 10,000 yards from the front line. In July 1917, it had become a Field Ambulance incorporating CCS’s 32, 44, and 3 Australian.
Notes
Suggested further reading:
· The German Poets of the First World War – Patrick Bridgwater
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