|
| A New Book from Soleil Press / Soleil Book Production Services turning memories into memoirs since 1988 www.turningmemories.com/soldiersdiary.html more info, e-mail: soldiersdiary@turningmemories.com |
|
 |
A Soldier's Diary of World War One fulfills a fond daughter's dream to publish her father's poignant wartime journals and poetry. The story his entries tell is a timelessly familiar tale of youthful exuberance and patriotism tempered over time by drudgery, despair and the grueling horrors of trench warfare. H.H. Storm wrote the poem below after his safe return from the War to End All Wars.  |
| Bois de Belleau My desk is piled up with its daily load Of checks and vouchers, payrolls to be signed, With books that must be proved, and all the mass Of stupid routine to be waded through. The summer sun streams on the office floor In hot and quivering suffocating rays, The typist stops her silly clattering And wishes ardently for five o'clock. The chief clerk has been making a pretense Of work by rustling papers back and forth; He's silent now, the traffic roar outside Subsides; the only sound is dull and low A big fly buzzing at the windowpane, Persistent buzzing in the shimmering heat, Monotonous buzzing in the waist-high wheat That swells into an awful obscene hum When we disturb the crawling feasting mass That half obscures and wholly does pollute The tragic heap of offal that was once A brave boy from some clean and peaceful home Long dead and festered in the July sun. This and a hundred other fearful forms Are the sad source of that miasmic taint That reaches to the Marne,an unseen fog Of death neglected,--glorious battle death! There's Lucy off behind us on the hill, Its barns and houses riddled by the shells, The Village cross-road mangled by the blast Of an exploded ammunition dump. And Bouresches to the north, the railway banks Dug out in fearsome tunnels where one meets The stricken enemy crawled in to die. Upon the other hand the yellow wheat Rolls off to Torcy, cut across by lines Of shallow gun-pits dug by hasty hands Where out across this stark, defenseless field The gallant soldiers of the sea had pressed Their battle line against the surging foe. Here many a tragic hole gives evidence That death has swooped along that open line With whistling bullet and with crushing shell, With fierce grenade and fiercer mortar bomb. | Some that had dug these burrows pitiful Had dug their graves and then had died therein, An inch or two of kindly earth for shroud, Their upturned guns their only monuments Planted on inthrust bayonet with the tag Of the dead soldier fastened to the butt. (The golden wheat is brown with upright guns.) And in one giant shell-hole in the midst There sticks out seven pairs of hobnailed feet. All strewn about the ground the useless kit The silly cans for meat and condiments, Great rusty hunks of raw and rancid pork, Raw bacon, --where men perished for a drink! But here before us stands the solid wood Black and sinister, all quiet now, A threatening island dark in yellow sea, A gloomy cavern yet more horrible, Its dead defenders still where they had died Asprawl their wrecked machine guns,others near Lie back in gun-pits gaping at the sky Their rifles on the tiny parapets Just as they were when that last shot was fired. At that wild wave that rolled up from the wheat That hacked and thrust and chopped and smashed and slew. There at the forest's tangled edge they lie: The bearded Landwehr, pipe forever out; The Saxon boy with yellow hair, the page Buzzing, buzzing in a maddening tone; A machine gun clatters in a pit nearby-- My typist has returned to work again, The clerks are looking at me curiously They wonder why I smash so viciously The big fly thumping on the windowpane Buzzing, humming, thumping in the heat, Before I start to sign the payroll checks. copyright © 2006 A. Margaret Bok |
