Poet - Wilfrid Wilson Gibson (2 October 1878 – 26 May 1962) was a British Georgian poet, (1) who was associated with World War I but continued publishing poetry into the 1940s and 1950s. Gibson never saw action. Gibson’s poetry was greatly influenced by his experiences during World War I. Having been denied entry into the army for several years due to his poor eyesight, Gibson finally joined the Army Service Corps Motor Transport in October 1917, he later became a clerk to a medical officer in south London.
His book ‘Battle’ (published in 1915) was a major influence on later wartime poets, it was read by Isaac Rosenberg, Robert Graves, Wilfred Owen, Ivor Gurney, and Siegfried Sassoon.
Poem - Breakfast
Breakfast is associated with trench experience on the Somme; it was published in the Nation in October 1914, and is based on a soldier’s anecdote quoted in the Nation. It is an example of imaginative realism by a Georgian poet and close friend of Rupert Brooke. His poetry is credited with being ahead of the time in writing about the mental states of soldiers and he may have been the first war poet to portray shellshock in his poem ‘The Messages’:
Back from the trenches, more dead than alive,
Stone-deaf and dazed, and with a broken knee,
He hobbled slowly, muttering vacantly…
Breakfast
We ate our breakfast lying on our backs,
Because the shells were screeching overhead,
I bet a rasher to a loaf of bread
That Hull United would beat Halifax
When Jimmy Stainthorp played full-back instead
Of Billy Bradford, Ginger raised his head
And cursed, and took the bet; and dropt back dead.
We ate our breakfast lying on our backs,
Because the shells were screeching overhead.
Painting
Flanders
Otto Dix enthusiastically enlisted in 1914. His post war work, however, was anti-war. Otto Dix's Der Krieg (The War), which was published in 1924, a moment declared as "the year against war" was released on the tenth anniversary of the beginning of the war. Dix expressed a profound rage at the societies, institutions, and individuals he viewed as promoting and profiting from war.
Dix painting ‘Flanders’ which he painted between 1934 to 1936 when he had been banned by the Nazis was dedicated to Henri Barbusse in whose book ‘La Feu’, in particular the last chapter, had inspired the painting: ‘We are awaiting daybreak at the same place where we threw ourselves to the ground at nightfall... Hesitantly it approaches. Icily, gloomily, and eerily stretching out over the fallow earth… Half dozing, half sleeping, staring with wide open eyes again and again, only for them to immediately fall shut again, paralyzed, shattered, and freezing we stare at the unbelievable return of light… With great effort and as unsteadily as if I were severely if I half get up and look around…. The others do not stir in their sleep.’
Trench Wastage
Throughout the war there were many set piece battles and engagements but there were far more days when no engagements took place. Trench life in the front and support lines became a routine however, death and wounds from enemy snipers and trench mortars was still a fact of daily life and is reflected in the War Diaries of the units. The battalions suffered casualties during reliefs when the companies rotated in and out of the front line and support trenches. Falkirk District man, 9518 Corporal Edward Gilbert, ‘A’ Company,1st Battalion, Gordon Highlanders, 8th Infantry Brigade, 3rd Division. The Battalion was in the line at Vierstraat. The War Diary records that it was quiet with intercompany reliefs being carried out. They record two casualties. Edward died of a gunshot wound to the abdomen sustained on 6 March 1915 and he died in Locre on 7 March.
The British policy was also one of aggression designed to demoralize the enemy and to instil a sense of purpose in the troops. This aggression took the form of trench raids involving dozens and sometimes hundreds of men and the later involved pitched battles in the local area they occurred. Casualties inevitably occurred. Falkirk District man, S/40878 Private Andrew Scott, 8th Battalion, Seaforth Highlanders, 44th Infantry Brigade, 15th (Scottish) Division. The battalion were in the line at Verlorenhoek at Cambridge Trench. At 01.30am on 8 July the battalion took part in a raid on the German trenches opposite. Battalion casualties are reported as 1 officer missing, Other ranks 12 missing, 2 killed, and 15 wounded. Andrew was one of the wounded and subsequently died of his wounds.
Even when there was no actual fighting casualties still occurred it could be as a result of smoke from a cooking fire bringing artillery fire down on the trench or a working party clearing an area of the trench during the day and their shovels appeared over the top of the trench which could bring either trench mortar or artillery fire down on them and resulting in dead or wounded men. (2)
Notes
1. Georgian Poetry is a series of anthologies showcasing the work of a school of English poetry that established itself during the early years of the reign of King George V. The Georgian poets were, by the strictest definition, those whose works appeared in a series of five anthologies named Georgian Poetry, published by Harold Monro and edited by Edward Marsh, the first volume of which contained poems written in 1911 and 1912. The group included Edmund Blunden, Rupert Brooke, Robert Graves, D. H. Lawrence, Walter de la Mare, Siegfried Sassoon, Ralph Hodgson, and John Drinkwater.
2. Read more about death and all its forms here https://www.theypressalient.com/post/death-in-all-its-forms
Sources:
Poetry of the Great War An Anthology – Edited by Dominic Hibberd and John Onions
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