KS3 Isaac Butler Year 8

"Frederick Arthur"

I once believed it an honour to fight, to die for one’s country,

My love, I dare to admit,

My life lost, nevermore found.

I once believed it noble to lie about my age, to benefit one’s country,

My love, my biggest regret,

15 years, too soon to end.

KS4 Jessica Needham Year 10

"Hope"

Blinding,

The light shone down as if it were God reaching out to me,

Warmth,

Wrapping mellowness and delight around my green and purple shoulders,

Echo,

Birds and soldiers sung as the clouds danced in the harsh blue sky.

BOOM!

Screams pierce the beautiful peace of the joyful soldiers,

Distraught,

The joyful soldiers now worried and frightened scurry in the mud like mice,

Panic,

My mind races, my heart pounds, my legs freeze.

BOOM!

Clicking,

Surrounding soldiers shake while pulling back the cocking handle to prepare for fire,

Screeching,

Shouts ring and run in my ear, blocking out the thuds and yells of other men in despair,

I once believed it wise to leave my city, to fight for one’s country,

My love, I no longer recollect my home

Heartbroken, I fear never to return.

I once believed the sea breeze would linger, to remember ones   

country,

My love, the stench of the dead,

A graveyard, now my rotten lodgings.

I once believed in the seductiveness of fighting, to save ones

country,

My love, I miss my queen’s street,

Passchendaele, with its brutality consuming.

I once believed it a chore to grow old, to burden one’s country,

My love, I wish for such a privilege,

Portsmouth, my love, keep my seaside home warm for one day I

                                                                       dream to return to you

Crackling,

Thunder and lightning awakens on the horizon of the filth.

What lies between me and surviving?

What will happen to our men?

Will this be the end?

Still,

Silent shafts of bright sunlight penetrates the smoke,

Weak,

Men moan and sob in the foul contamination of the dirt.

Torture,

Fighters lay in agony among others.

Torment,

Roars continue to spread, infectious howls reflect emotion,

Desire,

The thought of being out of this nightmare swims in my head,

Worry,

Doubts flood and swallow my aspiration.

Hope,

I try to reach for help but God is no longer between my arms,

Relief,

What feels like forever may have come to an end.

BOOM!

I thought wrong.

Year 7 - Molly Pettifer

Lying on the ground of the demolished markets;

Stalls harassed from the irate missiles;

Melancholic soldiers bleeding incessantly,

As they see their last sight: billowing bombs.

Creeping up behind me,

The gas full with poison,

Was a sea of an eerie haze,

As it took the lives of fighters.

A rumbling grunt-- ravenous for lives,

Fills the air with a feeling of contamination,

As the victims run for aid,

Some win the fight for their lives . . . Some don’t.

Within a split second,

All was quiet,

As the traumatic news spread.

Year 8 Elowen Wescott

Life of a soldier

I trudge out of the trenches into the sludge,

Facing the derelict warzone,

Holding no grudge,

With my friends, never alone,

I charge screaming into the fight,

The faint noise of bullets whistling,

Creeping out in the dead of night,

My fragile mind ever so brittle,

The familiar noise of bombs dropping,

A cloud of gas emerging,

People with lost limbs always hopping,

The candle of hope always burning,

From the menacing enemy trench,

I fumble with my gas mask,

Guarding my nose from the stench,

My friends arm in a cast,

I strap it on just in time,

A cloud of green gas smothered my eyes,

Wiping off the dirt and grime,

Yelping out little cries,

The choking and stuttering,

Ringing in my ears,

Dead bodies still guttering,

My friend plunged at me gasping for air,

Letting out little tears,

Sending out sacred prayers,

His white eyes writhing in their sockets,

Spluttering up toxic blood,

Clasping the relics in our pockets

Trudging back through the mud,

We trudged back tired, defeated,

Carrying my friend dead and lifeless,

Our mission to win wasn't completed,

Struggling through the crisis,

His whole soul had left his body,

He wasn't a person any more,

Going back, hungry, groggy,

Laying his corpse on the floor,

Just a body… limp and lifeless.

Indigo Sayer

My Dearest William

To my dearest William,

I have been in the factory.

It’s been tough working 10 hours a day,

But then I think and actually,

I remember it’s all for you.

I hope you are doing well,

I’ve been worried sick.

I hear that out in the trenches it’s hell,

Having rats scurrying around with tics.

How’s Richard doing?

You two were so excited to be going off together.

You were looking over as everyone was wooing,

Then again I think you boys were looking at the weather.

I hope these are getting through to you,

I miss you so much right now.

I’ve still got the picture of you I drew,

Of when you were pulling that plough.

I love you so much,

I cannot wait for when you come back.

I can still remember your elegant touch,

While you held onto me when it was pitch black.

I will write every week for you,

I will be waiting for you my dearest.

Sincerely,

Mary

Year 9 - Beth Rolfe

Last Moments

Vision blurred and sense dulled,

Private Rolfe laid face down,

Gasping for breath in a hole like hell.

Crimson droplets trickled down the cracks of his face

And seeped into his swollen mouth.

The metallic tang buried itself deep into his dry tongue.

The inky black sky was moonless.

Repugnant remains of mustard gas filled him with nausea.

Young souls screeching, screaming, withering,

Dying.

Images of happier days swept into his mind.

As they wrapped around him

He briefly embraced some respite from his obvious fate.

Days spent sailing on the Solent

And the days spent on the pebbled beach flashed before him.

Tranquillity and peacefulness blanketed the coast.

A warm and comforting hand reassured him.

He turned and her love radiated.

It captivated him.

Optimism and contentment permeated every part of him.

Overwhelmed with confusion, reality washed over him

And cherished memories slowly faded.

His breathing was shallow and his pulse weakened.

The pain eased and he slipped away.

Year 10 Tom Spanner

The Bard Of Passchendaele

We cower, bayonets fixed and shaking in their nerve,

Our visions of destitution are deafening,

The men scream, alive with belief and verve

In their coarse lungs, though hid from reckoning.

‘The left division yields, lads! Keep going, success

Is almost upon us!’ the valiant cry sounds, and echoes,

Fears of loss, of humanity and of anger, coalesce,

As hundreds of shrill, harsh bullets streak by; a falsetto.

Coarse in their unfathomable determination,

The obstreperous Hun march forth, halted seldom,

For their fight is for a dying, fatigued machine, the nation

Of Germany, her armies forging on through the fields of Belgium.

‘Bloody hell, the lewis gun’s rattling laughter shan’t be our final lullaby,

Over the top, Tommy!’ a lion’s final chant among the cries of sheep,

This sonorous noise among wintery winds, a worthy battle-cry,

Perhaps a soldier’s cracked, persistent hope is his most faithful leap.

Year 11 Kirsty Powell

The guns they scold eleven times,

Into the air, a viscous chime,

Over the hills of mass they go,

Creep across the corpse in row,

They cry and leap and pierce the sky,

Into the gleam of heaven’s eye,

But heaven is not a hand that holds,

The view of bright or light or gold,

For blood, it seeps, into the soil,

And rots the roots of nature’s foil,

Blood red is the ground and the earth and the floor,

From which boys and their brothers and their fathers downpour,

A cross is indented in the thick of my skin,

And the soars of the blue of my city within,

Collide in my veins with a crash that is harder,

Than the crashes of waves that crash on the harbour,

Though the stench of the sea is not one like this,

Nor is home, nor is Portsmouth, nor are friends, but a hiss,

A hiss of the sly, sadist screech of the war,

That sends boys in the air, and their souls to the floor,

And there faintly, a voice, a man’s it must be,

Ricochets in the air, amidst weapons, it is free,

It calls the name which I believe to be mine,

And I clutch the cold gun in my arms the last time,

The heavens above are a blue drenched in grey,

That marks the bloody chapter of this bloody day,

A surge is within me, one of blue gold and white,

As I throw myself forward with all of my might,

Into earth and the soil that is drowned with thick blood,

And the dirt and the rain and the cold and the mud,

I am over the edge of the safety I have known,

I am away from the place that I know to be home,

But the guns, they scold eleven times,

Into the air, a viscous chime,

Blood red is the ground and the earth and the floor,

So are hands, so are brothers, so are boys, so is war.

Year 7 Maleesa Ceesay

Together

Help in the shadows,

That's what we do.

Making clothes,

For all of you.

Growing vegetables,

For us all to eat.

Sharing is key,

When the war is ripe.

Bombs fall,

But we can't fight back,

As we are all women and children.

All I can do is pray.

Pray for my brother,

And pray for all anywhere and everywhere.

We hide in our shelters,

Knitting and sewing,

For our soldiers in the trenches,

Who are dying everyday.

With all of our hearts,

We will remember them,

And honour them highly.

They will never be forgotten,

Because with all of our hearts,

They are with us forever.

And in the poppy,

That lies on your chest,

There souls lay proud with dignity,

Knowing that the world is like this,

Because of them.

Year 8 - Matthew Hague

Pause for Thought

They like me, a father, A son,

And a soldier.

Breaking silence in the fields

The echoes of man-made devils ring out

The mayhem had started again

Don’t Pause For Thought.

The start of night

Air full of fear

Destruction all around

Bodies sweating at the thought of death.

But Don’t Pause For Thought.

More gun shots

Louder gun shots

Louder still

Someone screams

Alarms blast

Not Pausing For Thought.

Hurrying back to shelter

Enemies closing

Someone falls

Worse than hell

Soldiers thinking of families at home

No. Don’t Pause For Thought.

Death approaches, remember

This is for our country

This is for our land

Someone will always think about the ones

Who died for the millions

They will pause for thought.

.

Lucie-Lou Stanley

Never again will those blood painted fields be green,

For the stain has set too deep,

By enemy forces,

Raging attacks,

And their army generals calling the shots,

And instructing death upon others,

BOOM,

SMASH,

And the cacophony of gunshots filling survivors ears,

As they are gunned down,

One by one,

By the platoon of invaders,

As their tanks roll through the destroyed streets,

And small pieces of rubble are crushed under their feet,

As millions were murdered…

Year 9 Jay Morris

The Price of Passchendaele

I have become the walking dead

Soaked to my death

Covered nose to foot in mud

A sea of clay and mud to navigate

I would give all things to wash away

The horrors of this human sacrifice

And for the quantities who fought and died

And walked the rotten planks of this filth-ridden quagmire

The price of their lives is our cost of living

Year 10 - Lucy Cobb

So cold.

Standing in the trenches,

I realise how much I miss home.

My family.

My friends.

My life.

So long.

We left in July.

It feels like it's been years,

Though it's probably only been weeks.

I remember the pubs back in Portsmouth and the nights spent with mates

Here there's just mud.

So hard.

Seeing new mates die,

And not seeing old mates at all.

Knowing it's only a matter of time before... before it all ends for me, like it has for so many others.

But I just hope it doesn't come to that.

So much rain.

You're no stranger to rain when you live in Portsmouth,

But it's never as heavy as this.

It's like the sea is being dropped on us.

And that's an understatement.

So much mud.

It's getting thicker every day.

It won't be long before we drown in it.

It gets in our boots, in our shirts and in our trousers.

There's no escaping the mud.

Even if we tried, we couldn't.

So much waiting.

I may've been able to tolerate it if we were doing something.

All day we're sat in the blisteringly cold trenches.

Waiting.

Left to our own thoughts.

Thoughts can be dangerous when left for too long.

Too many thoughts.

Bad, bad thoughts.

I push them away, cover them with thoughts of my family, my job at the docks, all my mates.

But they tear through.

It's hard to forget the people you've seen die in front of you.

Whole lives whisked away in a matter of seconds.

I often wonder why we're still here.

Why we aren't dead yet.

So cold.

My hands are frozen stiff.

We are freezing.

Slowly, but surely.

Freezing.

The distant sounds of occasional gunshots drill into my brain

And I remember home.

My family.

My friends.

My life.

By kind permission of the Imperial War Museum

© IWM (Q 5941)

The lasting images of Passchendaele are of a hellish mire. Broken remnants of trees pointing out of a sea of slime. Men and horses struggling through a clinging morass. We remember the 3rd Battle of Ypres as ‘Passchendale’, to the men who endured it it was known as the “Battle of Mud”

Flanders is a flat landscape. Much farmland is reclaimed. The water table is very high. Even when the surface appears dry it can be sodden below; even a shallow dig reaches water. Farming the land required extensive drainage systems.

LADS IN LODGINGS

David Craven, 15 ½ , an apprentice, of Cottage-lane, and Chas. Jenkins, 15, of Bramble-road, were jointly charged with stealing on the 3rd inst., three gold rings, one brooch, and 15s., valued together at £3, the property of Sarah A. Watson, at 10 Bramble-Road.

Portsmouth Evening News 8th October 1914

Our brains ache, in the merciless iced east winds that knife us ...

Wearied we keep awake because the night is silent ...

Low drooping flares confuse our memory of the salient ...

Worried by silence, sentries whisper, curious, nervous,

But nothing happens.

Watching, we hear the mad gusts tugging on the wire.

Like twitching agonies of men among its brambles.

Northward incessantly, the flickering gunnery rumbles,

Far off, like a dull rumour of some other war.

What are we doing here?

The poignant misery of dawn begins to grow ...

We only know war lasts, rain soaks, and clouds sag stormy.

Dawn massing in the east her melancholy army

Attacks once more in ranks on shivering ranks of gray,

But nothing happens.

Sudden successive flights of bullets streak the silence.

Less deadly than the air that shudders black with snow,

With sidelong flowing flakes that flock, pause and renew,

We watch them wandering up and down the wind's nonchalance,

But nothing happens.

Lynette Heynes was born 25 December 1916 (Christmas Day). She was less than 17 months old when her father died! Her brother Morris was not yet three! She was a poet, watercolourist and handmade moving cards. She married twice. Her second marriage, aged 56, was to George Henry Nicholson, a retired clergyman aged 71, in 1973 and they lived in Purley. Lynette won the Parishioner’s Award in 2007 for her work in the arts. These photographs show cards created by her and a collection of poems to which she contributed.

From the early C20th until the 1970's, many thousands of children, either orphans or 'in care' were sent to Australia or Canada, to start a 'new life'. Dr Barnados and many other children's charities participated. Undoubtedly 'well intentioned', the programme has in recent years been exposed as flawed and often involved abuse and exploitation.

Percy Eastland army returned to active service in the Battle of Passchendaele after being injured at the Somme. He severely wounded, in the 2nd Battle of Arras 1918. Alone and unable to move for several hours, he was found by the 1st Hampshire Regiment’s Padre Rev. S E Swann. Rev Swann and his batman carried Percy back to the British trenches on a stretcher “a nightmare journey through a hail of shells and bullets”. Percy had always wanted to thank Rev Swann personally for rescuing him and his chance came when Canon Swann came to Portsmouth to preach at Portsmouth Cathedral on 19th September 1954. “But for Canon Swann I should have died

Photograph from Portsmouth Evening News article on the meeting of Percy Eastland and Canon Swann 1954

The village of Passchendaele was completely obliterated

These arial reconnaissance photographs show the village of Passchendaele taken immediately before (lower) and immediately after the Battle. The dots in the post battle photograph are thousands of mud filled shell craters!

By kind permission of the Imperial War Museum

© IWM (Q 42918A)

Having taken Passchendaele, Haig chose not to advance to the submarine bases that had been his objective.

Haig was an experienced military leader in both fighting and management roles

He was fighting using military skills and tactics that had become less effective by because of significant technological advances in warfare the late C19th and early C20th.

These included -

Submarine warfare, tanks, telephone communications, areal reconnaissance, chemical weapons, and the machine gun.

The last four of especially altered the parameters of trench tactics. Haig and his commanders were learning on their feet.

But

He stuck to a faith in cavalry

He remained convinced that the "resolve" would win even when it was costing thousands of lives

He continued to believe that the machine gun was "over-rated" even after the fatalities of the Somme and the exemplar of Mametz Wood

Although the 'lions led by donkeys' sobriquet surfaced in the 1960's, Siegfried Sassoon played a major part in advancing this damning opinion of WW1 military leadership long before the term became well known.

"My subject is War and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity"

Wilfred Owen

The 'war poets' chose either to romanticise WW1 or, in the main, give voice to the tragedy and suffering. These were not 'pacifists' or anti-war poets, the overwhelming majority were serving soldiers but they felt the need to express and make understood the suffering war involves.

Sassoon was different.

In addition to the 'pity', his poems often castigate those who sent men to their deaths and criticise military leadership. These include journalists, women at home, local dignitaries (who often played a key role in recruitment as in Portsmouth) and military leaders.

Right hand arch of the Menin Gate Memorial. The missing of the Army Service Corps are inscribed on

Panel 56, just visible to the right inside the doorway including John Frederick White​

"The General" (1917) is a scathing parody of command ineptitude and, although written about his superior officer in the Royal Welsh (Maj-Gen Sir Reginald Pinney), is often taken as a condemnation of Haig. However, his poem "Song-Books of the War" mentions Haig by name.

Sassoon's poems identify with the ordinary soldier both in subject and they way they are written and often express the social chasm that existed between senior officers and the 'ranks' and the ease with which men were sent to their deaths.

"Victory will belong to the side that holds out the longest. There is no other course open but to fight it out. Every position must be held to the last man. There must be no retirement. With our backs to the wall and believing in the justice of our cause each one of us must fight on to the end."

Haig, Order of the Day (11 April 1918)

"He was a painstaking professional soldier with a sound intelligence of secondary quality. He had the courage and stubbornness of his race. But he did not possess the necessary breadth of vision or imagination to plan a great campaign against some of the ablest generals of the war. I never met a man in a high position who seemed to me so utterly devoid of imagination."

Lloyd George, War Memoirs (1928)

"In all the British offensives the British casualties were never less than 3 to 2, and often nearly double the corresponding German losses… The campaign of 1916 on the Western Front was from beginning to end a welter of slaughter."

Winston Churchill, The World Crisis (1923)

"Haig had a fine appearance, and a stern devotion to duty. Though he had no more idea than others how to win the war, he was sure that he could win it. Divine help would make up for any deficiencies on his part. This unshakeable confidence, and the support of the king, enabled Haig to survive a long record of failure and to emerge in the end victorious… A later generation may feel that Haig should have stood on the defensive and waited for the tanks. The French would not have tolerated this. The British public would have been still more indignant. Haig had to do what he did and, though he did not succeed, no one better was found to take his place."

AJP Taylor, The First World War (1963)

"As an executive commander there has hardly been a finer defensive general; in contrast, among those who have gained fame as offensive generals none perhaps have made worse errors… His mind was dominated by the instinct of method, where he failed was in the instinct of surprise – originality of conception, fertility of resource, receptivity in ideas. In his qualities and defects he was the very embodiment of the national character and the army tradition."

Sir Basil H Liddell Hart, Reputations (1928)

For a century, opinion on Haig has been split between two divergent summaries, the highly critical and the apologist. There have been great and accomplished names in both camps.

This quote from the close of the war demonstrates that, despite the Somme and Passchendaele, Haig's Victorian view that 'resolve' would win ignoring the cost in lives was unshaken!

The depiction of Haig as intractable and lacking in imagination originated with David Lloyd George. However, it must be remembered the men hated each other. Not only did they come from different and opposing backgrounds, Haig hated Lloyd George for 'interfering' in military matters by making him more accountable to the war Council and Lloyd George hated Haig for Mametz Wood and for the implications the war had for his political career. It has been said that Lloyd George agreed to Passchendaele in the hope that it would ruin Haigs career and remove him! EKG Sixsmith ("Douglas Haig" 1976) argued that Lloyd George was the prime cause of the damning view of Haig and that his opinion was very different before the Somme.

Haig's response to Churchill was that French pressure which forced him to keep fighting on the Western Front in 1916–1917, and wrote about the battle of Passchendaele in 1917:

"It is impossible for Winston to know how the possibility of the French army breaking up in 1917 compelled me to go on attacking. Pétain pressed me not to leave the Germans alone for a week, on account of the awful state of the French troops."

A J P Taylor's account of WW1 at its 50th anniversary was a major addition to the critical view of British military leadership. It manages to be both damning and give a grudging defence!

Perhaps the most reasoned assessment comes from Liddell Hart, that Haig was both accomplished and inept leading to some catastrophic decisions. A military man of his era in both the best and the worst aspects!!

In Flanders Fields, by John McRae

In Flanders fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row,

That mark our place; and in the sky

The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

Loved and were loved, and now we lie

In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:

To you from failing hands we throw

The torch; be yours to hold it high.

If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

In Flanders fields.

Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD

Canadian poet, teacher of English and Mathematics, pathologist, physician, author, artist and both a soldier and a surgeon during WWI

Note - this is not a link

To hear the recording use either of the two URL's below

www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKoJvHcMLfc

https://legionmagazine.com/en/2015/10/leonard-cohen-recites-in-flanders-fields

James Ockenden VC Memorial Bench Burgoyne Gardens Southsea Seafront

For an account of Ockenden's war, visit:

http://www.portsmouth.co.uk/heritage/war-hero-was-cheered-in-the-streets-on-his-return-home-1-3835877

Henry Thomas Allen

Reginald Egbert Batchelor

Reginald Harold Chamberlain

Clarence Harold Churchill

Reginald Arthur Clarke

Frank Clay

Cecil Herbert Mowlam Collingwood

Henry George Couzins

Clarance W Cox

Charles Edward Crockford

Charles Walter Dangerfield

Allen James Day

William Garnett Daysh

Charles David Dollery

Frederick Alexander Drackett

Arthur Boyett Earle

Alfred Stewart Earwicker

William John Edney

Frederick Frampton

Hugh Bernard German

John George Giles

Henry Cecil Hall

George Joseph Hankin

Frank James Henley

Ernest Harold Hoff

Albert Edward Hooker

Alfred William Horn

Henry Pembroke Innes

Abel Cain Ivery

George Bensly Iveson

George Stinton James

Sydney John Jenkins

Burton Thomas Knox

William Wallace McCrerie

Alfred Parfoot

George Edwin Harold Parks

George Powell

Albert Edward Roles

Edgar Thomas Smith

Charles Leonard Stokes

Willian Edward Stone

John Charles Dodsworth Tetley

Frederick George Thomas

Stanley Benjamin Tidy

Alfred Ernest Tilley

David Underdown

William Thomas Wills