War Poets 2 - Siegfried Sassoon: "The General" - In memory of Ted Soffe

‘GOOD-MORNING; good-morning!’ the General said
When we met him last week on our way to the line.
Now the soldiers he smiled at are most of ’em dead,
And we’re cursing his staff for incompetent swine.
‘He’s a cheery old card,’ grunted Harry to Jack

As they slogged up to Arras with rifle and pack.

But he did for them both by his plan of attack.

This is perhaps Sassoon's best known poem.  Short and to the point. with a beautifully planned and unexpected end.  

There is a story about the picture I have used.  It is of Ted Soffe a member of a established family in the New Forest village where I live.  The family recently asked to have his picture (the one above) placed in our village church as a memorial to the 100th anniversary of  his death in Gallipoli in September 2015.  The picture is now on the altar and we are asked to pray for him and his comrades.

Sassoon's poem backs up the feeling that the generals made a mess of this war.  This was once the accepted view but, with time, opinion on this has shifted a little and many now think that the generals were faced with a totally new type of war and by and large did surprisingly well.  
The Gallipoli campaign however is still thought of  as a fiasco and a terrible waste of life including that of Ted Soffe.  So perhaps it makes sense to associate this poem with Gallipoli and Ted Soffe.  Though, to be fair, the fault was more with the politician's than the military.  Here is a good summary of story.  The Australians and New Zealanders who suffered disproportional casualties still remain extremely bitter about Gallipoli.  Overall there were well over 100,000 casualties in Gallipoli, many of them through disease rather than bullets with about two thirds of the casualties being Turkish.  However in Turkey it is still regarded as a great victory.

As well as the Gallipoli campaign and the death of Ted Soffe and many an other, 2015 also marks the centenary of my father joining the army in World War I.  He survived or I would not be here.  I suppose the war, long gone in most respects, is being remembered by thousands of families across Europe and beyond.  To mark my father's centenary his writings on the war and his views on Siegfried Sassoon are about to be published in three e~books.  More information at www.njeanius.uk

PS: I find that one historian who wrote of Gallipoli was a school friend of mine Robert Rhodes James, now sadly dead.  I will always remember him for his wild enthusiasms for this, that and the other schoolboy craze and his consistent and much needed friendship when I was a new boy at the school.  I miss you Rhodes James, and wish I had thought to thank you while you were still alive.

PPS.  I have now been in touch with Angela Rhodes James his wife and at least had the opportunity to tell her the story about her husband.  I think it gave her pleasure to know that he was remembered from so long ago.  She is currently working to put Rhodes James's archive on line.  I think this is the link.
http://janus.lib.cam.ac.uk/db/node.xsp?id=EAD%2FGBR%2F0014%2FRHJS 

I should really add a bit more about Ted Soffe.  I hope to in due course.
 

Poem of the week - On reading the war poets - start of a series about war poetry

There's no such thing as bad publicity” Sam Goldwyn


I'd like to see a tank come through the class

Smothered in flags, steered by a bold Dragoon,

While teacher lists the horrors of old wars

And reads out poems by Owen and Sassoon.

Then hearts would jump, and brightness fill young eyes

And the whole room would fill with tears and cheers,

For war's addictive and it lifts our hearts

Despite its mounds of deaths and lakes of tears.

Yes there's excitement, beauty, friendship, love

Among the young who fight an ugly war.

This truth forgotten, then forget the hope

That someday we will suffer war no more.

Nick Mellersh 2015

I have often thought that the war poets are popular in part at least more because we are excited by war just as much as we are horrified by it. So this poem is a sort of parody of Sassoon's Blighters (see below) that tries to make that point. I often think that maybe war poems do as much to promote war as to discourage it.

No question that the poems are good.  Great even. Everything by Sassoon is beautifully made and seems to fit perfectly into place.  (Notice how my poem is stretched out to three stanza's while Sassoon manages it in two and with two rhymes in each stanza.) Owen is more swept with emotion and loose than Sassoon but in a way easier to read and empathize with. Anyway I hope to get my friends the Pascoes, Nigel and Lisa to record a set of poems by Sassoon and Owen and  perhaps add one or of my own.  I am struggling with a poem called "Who reads the Peace Poets."  So I hope you'll be following this and giving your opinions on whether you think Owen is better than Sassoon and on how and if the world can learn to live without war.  This is in part of course because I am just about to publish my father's life of Sassoon as an ebook - see the ebook tab at the top of this page.

Working on my dad's World War i ebook has made me think a lot about war, why we do it and how we can avoid it.

Anyway here is the Sassoon poem.

Blighters

The House is crammed: tier beyond tier they grin

And cackle at the show, while prancing ranks

Of harlots shrill the chorus, drunk with din;

‘We’re sure the Kaiser loves our dear old Tanks!’

I’d like to see a tank come down the stalls,

Lurching to rag-time tunes, or ‘Home sweet Home’,

And there’d be no more jokes in music-halls

To mock the riddled corpses round Bapaume.

Siegfried Sassoon

 

 

Poem of the week 12: More silly rhymes - Druskininskai and budgerigar

A pilot from Druskininskai
Lost his girlfriend and started to cry.
I said "If I were you-ski
You'd do what I do-ski
Just have a good screw-ski 'n fly."

Druskininskai is a spa town in Lithuania where I taught English once for a few weeks.  Probably writing this was a way I occupied a sleepless night.  Anyway not a bad rhyme I thought. 

Do you know any favoutie silly rhymes or maybe you wish to challenge me with another word to waste a sleepless night of rhyme searching. Here's one I wrote ages ago when someone on the telly was challenged for a rhyme for" budgerigar."  My solution was

Teaching a parrot to say "pretty Poly"
Is often dull and never jolly.
But one thing is far worse drudgery - far
It's trying to teach a budgerigar.

And talking of ebooks, which we weren't, my dad's first world war books will be published in the next few weeks.  If you are a World War I buff search the ebook or Kindle store for H E L Mellersh.  They are a really interesting set of books by someone who fought on the Western Front as a young man.

The Argos Catalogue is our holiest book

Oh the Argos catalogue is our holiest book.

And if you don't believe me, you should take a closer look.

It's for all ages, for all classes. It's not snobbish, it's not tribal.

Fifteen hundred coloured pages all much brighter than the bible.

Laid out in useful sections, page after page it seems

Can bring us the material to realise our dreams.

Here the dreaming bold explorer can wrestle nature's rages

With anoraks and wind-proof tents in ten full-colour pages.

And the young girl who is blossoming imagine she's a queen

Wearing ear rings, nose and toe rings and everything between.

The toddler and pensioner can dream they're bully boys

With bicycles and tricycles or shining techno toys.

There's pages and pages of things you'd love at school

And a tiny, shiny mobile that will make you feel so cool.

And the spotty adolescent can imagine he's a stud

With that so-cool leather jacket and that holder for his “Bud”.

There's potions, and there's lotions, and perfumes from afar

That will help convince your lover just how beautiful you are.

There's things to make life better no matter what you do

Every page turned is a promise there can be a better you.

Oh the layout it is tawdry. And the text is rather naff

But that need n't be a worry. It's the things that we must have.

Yes there's really something holy in pages such as these

We're so simple and so innocent and such easy folk to please.

And a dream that things can change you's not as stupid as it seems

For us fragile human beings are as fragile as our dreams.

Nick Mellersh 2008

 I think I wrote this when I was church warden.  And if any job is likely to make you despair of religion, it is that.  Anyway there is still something innocent, and childlike, and even admirable in the hope we put in getting new things.  Experience tells us it won't help, but who learns from experience? 

Anyway the ebooks are nearly ready so more news of them soon.
Nick 

Sorry I've failed to get a poem up for a few weeks.  I've been away and came home to find my boiler and my septic tank didn't work any more.

Poem of the Week: The curse of the iphone

A Cautionary tale of Jane and James

Dedicated to my grand-daughters Jasmine and Aline in the hope of saving them from a terrible fate

This is the tale of Jane and James 

Addicted to computer games.

Parents were begged in plaintive tones

About their need for brand new phones.

"We need it for our homework, Dad,

And Uni too and you'll be glad

When we're the brightest kids by far

And in each subject get A star.

Sure as our names are Jane and James

We'll never use them to play games!"

But Oh alas it was not true

For playing's all that they would do.

When each of them had got their phone,

They could not leave the games alone.

The only way they could be seen

Was staring at a tiny screen!

They would not look at you or talk,

Or read or sleep or eat or walk.

In a strange world each to their own,

They just stared at their brand new phone.

Their Dad for burgers had to go for

While James sat playing on the sofa.

He mumbled curses then took sips

Of Cola and ate bags of chips

The game and nothing else would matter

While he got fatter, fatter, fatter

He would not leave the game alone

Until his weight was 20 stone!

He played a baseball game until

He'd mastered every single skill.

Then one day with all bases loaded,

He ate a chip - and then exploded!

He died in very little pain.

The new phone never worked again.

So what you ask became of Jane?

Did she escape her new phone's curse?

Sadly her fate was even worse!

She found a score she had to beat,

And from that day refused to eat.

She'd not eat breakfast lunch or dinner

And she grew thinner, thinner, thinner!

They tempted her with cakes and cream

But "no" she said "I have a dream!

I must be Champion Supreme!

I'll leave food - if it;'s all the same,

Until I've won my final game!"

In six months time at last she won.

And then she thought "What have I done?

What is there left for me to do?

I know! At last there's time to poo!"

(At this point you must not forget she

Was thin as a strand of cooked spaghetti.)

She sat down on the toilet seat,

Then slipped in bottom, hands and feet.

It greaves me but I have to say

The string-thin child was flushed away!

Moral

Children should only use these media,

To crib their homework from Wikipedia!

                                                        Nick Mellersh September 2012 Pictures by Jeanie Mellersh

This is my attempt at a modern version of Hillaire Belloc's cautionary tales like the stories of Jim who was eaten by the lion and Matilda who burnt her house down.  I'm quite pleased with it, but it would be nice to get more of Belloc's tone and conciseness.  And Beloc never uses triplets (three consecutive rhyming lines) which I often do and maybe shouldn't.  Anyway it leads me nicely on to ebooks as I learn from my father's first world war books that Belloc wrote a column in one of the papers about the war's progress. The ebooks are going ahead slowly and will be available soon.  See the ebook page.

I love Belloc and his poems. Do you remember an Inn Miranda is something other than the Cautionary Tales that I always remember.  His proposed epitaph was
       When I am dead,
       I hope it may be said,
      His sins were scarlet,
     But his books were read.

P.S.  I've just found a complete online version of the Cautionary Tales with the original illustrations by BTB (Basil Temple Blackwood) who was some aristocratic friend of Belloc. See following,  my poem's advice in the poem, the entry in Wikipedia.

Poem of the week 9: Silly Rhyme Season

Ye anglo-indian poet challenge

A Rhyme for Rabindaranat Tagore

If  you want to hinder a gnat before

It bites and stings.

Hit it with the complete poetical works of Rabindarat Tagor

And squash its wings.

and IF you are ready, a rhyme for Rudyard Kipling

If you can ride a bike, with mudguard rippling

While writing poems that keep in perfect time,

Why, you're a poet, good as Rudyard Kipling

And, what is more, you've mastered silly rhyme.

In an election result caused in no small measure by last week's poem on behalf of the super rich, their party has triumphed again in the English election, Oh bother! Who would have thought this blog was so influential? Anyway it is time to go off in a huff and talk about something entirely irrelevant like silly rhymes. 

Lying in bed one night in a school in Bataha India (click here to learn about it. It's really interesting!) I started wondering if I could find a rhyme for Rabindarnat Tagore. It was easier than I thought.

Buoyed by this I spent the rest of the night tyying it with Rudyard Kipling. He ho for silly rhymes!! I love them!

Poem of the week 8: The super rich AREN'T RICH ENOUGH

The super-rich ARE N'T RICH ENOUGH!

It's tragic but it's true!

The poor things need financial help

From folks like me and you.

This is the truth they tell us

(It would break a heart of stone!)

From the television stations and

The newspapers they own.

And some have even said aloud

(Oh woe and lack-a-day!)

That if we do not pay them more

They'll up and go away.

And what's the cause of all their woe?

The reason clear of course is

That the stingy, mingy, grasping poor

Are stealing their resources!

The super rich are feeling poor!

To make their wealth much surer.

All sound men say, the only way

Is make the poor much poorer.

So reach into your pockets

Pay up, and never fuss.

For if the super rich are poor,

What hope is there for us!

--------------------------------------------------

Well not a word of this is true

There'd be no tears of sorrow

If each one of the super rich

Should quietly die tomorrow.

We'll always have the super rich, but here, oh here's the curse

That if we purge this super rich, the next lot may be worse.

                                                              Nick Mellersh 2008 & 2915

With the election coming up I thought it was time for a political poem.  So here it is.