I went to an extraordinary exhibition last year called "Spirit of Anzac" which was touring all over Australia. It came closer than anything I've seen in capturing the daily experiences of those who fought, and died, in the First World War, and especially in trench warfare on the Western Front. I have tried to express something of that experience, as I understand it.

 

Adagio of the Heart

 

A soldier hears the signal whistle: Go . . .

scale the ladder, lunge, crouch low

across no-man's land, all fuzzy, silent;

machine guns hack; mates lie back, violent

whispers, 'kill me-please' …... shouts of madmen

storming the line, laughing wildly at death

with their final, useless breath.

 

I was on the Somme, first day (Pals Battalion,

Grimsby Chums) a Lincolnshire boy in action!

Thirty years I've held my tongue, for I ran

from what I'd seen and done;

but now I must tell stories from my ageing heart,

for my comrades, my country. My time is near,

and my duty clear. Listen … .

 

A warm July morning, we'd been shelling for days,

Fritz's trenches were surely ablaze;

so out we'd stride, fearing nothing, stoutly to win

with bayonets glinting. Then the machine-guns begin.

On we tread, as they spray lead like firehoses,

or scythes through wheat, the winnow blood;

they murdered my mates where they stood.

 

But not me. I was left to seek salvation as I might.

I reached their lines, now a hand-to-hand fight;

his helmet flew off, a little man of fifty,

a family man? I despatched him swiftly

with my rifle butt. It was him or me.

I gave a dying man water as I left;

when he died in my arms, I wept.

 

You know the rest: shell-shock, shrivelling

up inside, the drink, a hand-grenade ticking.

I was just a kid, but my face was cracked,

my nights haunted by visions wracked

by too much reason, too much killing.

When a warmonger spouts his seductive lies,

let him be the one who fights and dies.

 

Chris Hubbard

Perth, 2016