Illustrations of conflict: in what way does poetry reflect the attitudes of those affected by warfare?

Each war, great or small, has made its mark on the psyche of those who fought or who experienced it, and on societies which were affected by it. This is reflected by the artworks produced during conflict; great paintings and sketches, stark photography and film, heartfelt and often black humour-filled songs, by letters, memoirs and particularly by poetry. 

This essay will primarily focus on two pieces of poetry written during the World Wars; Goldfield was a German Jew who fought in the Great War about whom nothing more is known, and John Gillespie Magee, Jr. (1922-1941), who was an American who joined the RCAF (Royal Canadian Air Force) in the Second World War and flew the Supermarine Spitfire.

The two World Wars of the last century have proved fertile ground for poetry of all sorts. Official verse lauded the efforts of “us” and demonised “them”; poetry was used very effectively for propaganda in most, if not all, of the nations involved. In the Great War populations quickly went from being pacific and anti-war to aggressively supportive of conflict. Propaganda was, undoubtedly, a key reason for an about-face and it would be used by all nations to great effect throughout both wars. The German propaganda machine made very effective use of epic cultural mythology, particularly the Germanic/Nordic heroic tradition, and “it should come as no surprise, then, that many German war posters contained images of dragons, Valkyries, and sword-wielding, Siegfried-like heroes” (Josh, 2008) (see Appendix 2).

Alongside governmental or official poetry, used to shape public opinion, there was a vast amount of other work produced during the World Wars. Some of it was written for sale or in an attempt to capture the feelings of a nation.

Much of it was written in an act of catharsis, “the process of releasing, and thereby providing relief from, strong or repressed emotions” (Oxford Dictionaries, n.d.) or as a requiem, “an act or token of remembrance” (Oxford Dictionaries, n.d) for the fallen. Some, as Gregory tells us, was even written simply because it seemed the thing to do!

“Much of it was made to be sold; and much of it was made to order: to engender hate, or to stimulate munition factories and recruiting; and not a little of it seems to have been written by men for no reason other than that ‘war poetry’ was expected of them” (Gregory, 1921).

The poetry of war, then, captures an enormous range of experience and emotion and takes many forms: from a paean glorifying war to an obloquy denouncing it.

“An einen Vermißten Freund!” (to a missing friend!) was written by a German Jew named Goldfield about whom very little is known; Appelbaum (2013) is able to tell us that he was killed during the First World War but nothing more, not even his first name. Not very much is known about the participation of German Jews in the Great War, partially due to the bureaucratic pogroms of military records and public memory by the Nazi Government. Penslar (2011) wrote of a 1977 documentary about Jewish participation in the war which asked “who, today, is still aware that between 1914 and 1918 some 500,000 Jewish fellow citizens fielded 100,000 soldiers, of whom 12,000 fell?” (p. 442).

An estimated 1.5 million Germans were killed in the First World War; it is fitting, therefore, that the theme of Goldfield’s poem is death. The title (to a missing friend!) boldly hints, euphemistically, at the theme and this is expanded upon in the first line, something which is repeated, very effectively, in each of the three short verses. There is a very sorrowful tone throughout the poem; it is a threnody for the titular, unnamed friend who has been slain but whose body lies missing.

Despite the discordant theme and feel of the poem there is a regular metre throughout; the order and regular beat of the lyrics grants an ordered, martial feel that makes the loss starker and more apparent. Each of the three stanzas is a quatrain where the first and second pair of lines rhyme in an AABB pattern reminiscent of the English sonnet. Each quatrain builds on the one before throughout, developing the theme as it does, in the manner of a sonnet. However, it lacks the closing rhyming couplet, and the precise rhyming structure, of the English sonnet so Miller (n.d.) might better describe it as an “indefinable sonnet”.

The first stanza laments the loss of a friend, certainly slain, but for whom the poem is the only memorial which can be offered as there is no body to mourn over:

“You have no grave, no cross … but you did die.
Maybe in some dark thicket your bones lie
Or you were sunk in swamp in deep of night,
Or Cossacks cruelly robbed you of the light.”
(Appelbaum, 2013).

There is great impact from the caesura in the opening line; the pause gives the reader a moment to think about what the lack of grave or marker means before the declaration of death is made. The alliteration in the third line, “sunk in swamp”, offers a sibilant suggestion of a body dragged deep beneath the earth, further alliteration in the fourth line, where “Cossacks cruelly” offer death, suggests the Eastern Front. It is, perhaps, a cruel irony that Russian Cossacks would be involved in pogroms against the Jewish people of the Ukraine in the following war.

The second stanza builds on the first quatrain; the uncertainty of how the soldier’s friend has died is married to the certitude of the death. The duality of reasons for mourning is powerfully presented:

And when it was and where and how …and why
I know not: death in forest does not cry.
You are a skull now white-bleached by the rain
Round which the weasel lightly leaves its train.
(Appelbaum, 2013).

In this quatrain Goldfield personifies death, stating that death does not offer tears. He uses evocative language to contrast the vital, living nature of the forest and weasel with the lone, imagined, remains of the fallen friend – a skull. The skull is striking and forms an iconic, stark, image which has long been tied with death, and which poses an instinctive warning to any who see it. It is a symbol that echoes with the inevitability of death, a memento mori, Latin for 'remember (that you have) to die’ (Oxford Dictionaries, n.d.), which is instinctively understood and that reminds all of humanities shared mortality.

The closing stanza renews the theme of death and loss, underlining earlier references to the solid reality of the earth and, very effectively, again linking death with nature:

You are the ploughed earth on which horses stand
You are the grain that once did crown the land
You are the bread the farmer once did eat
You are the strength when peace returns to greet.
(Appelbaum, 2013).

The reader is offered closure, of a sort, in the final quatrain. The dead man is compared, dramatically, with the very land which he fought for, his loss reflecting the real hunger besetting the German people as the country was blockaded by the Royal Navy and her allies. Goldfield promises that his fallen friend offers a future once the rifle has been put down, “when peace returns”, and that the dead will be remembered and will give strength to those who remember them, feeding them spiritually (as they will be fed physically once goods are allowed to flow into the country once more).

The subject and form of Goldfield’s “to a missing friend!” can be compared with a far better known poem, “the soldier” by Rupert Brooke which was written in 1914 when patriotic war fervour was at its height. Rather than lamenting the fallen as a great loss as does Goldfield, Brooke offers a celebration of sacrifice for the betterment of his country. This is a good example of how attitudes, both in Britain and Germany, changed through the war: initial fervent support was worn down by the horrors of warfare, particularly on the Western Front. In Britain unthinking support for prosecuting the war lessened in 1915, and reduced significantly throughout 1916. In Germany clever use of propaganda and tight control of media outlets meant that there was general support for the war, despite great hardships, into 1917 and until the morale collapse of the country, leading to the surrender of 1918.

The poem has been translated from its original German by Dr Peter Appelbaum. Dr Appelbaum is a clinical microbiologist and author with an interest in languages and modern Jewish history. Whilst he is undoubtedly an expert who has translated many similar poems there must be concern with any translation as, in poetry, words are often selected very particularly to inspire or convey emotion and subtext; the interpretation of Goldfield’s meaning presented by Dr Appelbaum is his own.

Nevertheless, “to a missing friend!” is a powerful piece of writing which in twelve simple lines underlines the horror felt by the author, how tired he has become and how death is a constant companion; perhaps a friend to replace the one who has fallen. There is a measure of irony that, since we know nothing more of the author than he was a German Jew who died in the Great War with only a surname to act as memorial the poem, a lament to a fallen, unnamed friend who lacks even memorial, has become his only monument.

Not all war poetry is mournful; writing in the Second World War Pilot Officer John Gillespie Magee, Jr. wrote a joyful poem in praise of flight. Though he was an American Magee had crossed the border with Canada in order to fight against Nazi Germany. He completed flight training aged 18 and joined No. 412 Fighter Squadron, RCAF (Royal Canadian Air Force) in June of 1941. Magee flew the Supermarine Spitfire in fighter sweeps over France and air defence over England as well as taking part in test flights of new and improved versions of the Spitfire. 

After one of these test flights Magee wrote a letter to his parents in which he commented "I am enclosing a verse I wrote the other day. It started at 30,000 feet, and was finished soon after I landed" (Great Aviation Quotes, n.d.). On the back of that letter was written the verse that would be published and which has become an anthem for pilots the world over: "high flight". It is, perhaps, easy to imagine how inspirational such a flight, one of the first to go so high, could be to a young man whose life was filled with thrills and dangers.

"High flight" is a rapturous acclamation of the joy of flight. It is a sonnet presented in two verses, one of 8 lines and one of 6; Magee's poem has an ABABCDCDEFEGFG structure which fits, if imperfectly, the Italian sonnet style: an octave of eight lines followed by a sestet of six. A key feature of the Italian sonnet is the volta, or turn. This is a change of subject matter or theme between the octave and sestet; as the rhyming pattern changes so does the nature of the poem (Miller, n.d.).

The traditional rhyming pattern of the octave is ABBAABBA when used by English-speaking poets this form has evolved in, such as ABBAACCA (such as in Wordworth's "scorn not the sonnet") or ABBACDCD (such as in Charles Tennyson-Turner's "missing the meteors"). There is more flexibility in the sestet both traditionally and as adapted by English-speaking poets. Magee's structure does not fit this form completely but the octave and sestet are clear, as is the volta; the octave speaks of general deeds where the sestet speaks of going higher, going high enough to have "touched the face of God" (Great Aviation Quotes, n.d.).

Magee, like Goldfield, makes use of alliteration to reinforce the message of his words; the repeated sibilant sounds of "slipped the surly bonds of Earth", "sun-split clouds", "soared and swung" amongst "sunlit silence" into the "sanctity of space" suggest the graceful and fluid movement of a serpent escaping from bondage and finding freedom high above everything. He, too, makes good use of personification: of the subject, which is himself, of his plane and of the air and wind itself. His plane is described as an "eager craft" with "laughter-silvered wings", which is eager to join his dance through the skies. The "shouting wind" is given agency as it is "chased" through "footless halls of air".

Throughout the first part of the poem, the octave, there is reference to light and, especially, to the sun: there can be little doubt that Magee is writing a poem which has nothing to hide and which is very positive indeed. The sun has connotations of life and warmth, of masculine and powerful gods; the octave links the sun to this power, obliquely suggesting that the power of the sun is being sought by the dancer as he reaches higher. "Sunwards I've climbed", Magee writes "high in the sunlit silence" (Great Aviation Quotes, n.d.).

If the octave is the journey high into the skies, into the realm of the sun god, then the sestet tells of the arrival. Magee flies high indeed, higher than "lark, or ever eagle flew" into the "high untrespassed sanctity of space". Sanctity, the state or quality of being holy (Oxford Dictionaries, n.d.), reinforces the divinity of the sun, and of the pilot who flies close to it. Magee goes further still; in the closing line he states that he could "put out his hand" and that, in so doing, he had "touched the face of God" (Great Aviation Quotes, n.d.).

Magee is not alone in creating intensely joy-filled war-time aviation poetry; he may have had inspiration not only from his flight but also from Cuthbert Hicks (1938) poem "the blind man flies": "high flight" shares its closing line:

"For I have danced the streets of heaven,
And touched the face of God"
(Hicks, 1938, p100).

If "the blind man flies" was an inspiration for Magee's poem then a similarity in theme and feel would be expected, however, other wartime aviation poems present a similar perspective. "Fighter pilot", written by William Kean Seymour in 1942, speaks of the pilot's "gay courage" and "valiant heart" (Wings over Cambridge, n.d.). Seymour goes on to reinforce the image of the fighter pilot forged above the Western Front during the Great War, calling him the "knight of our war-torn skies".

These are not exceptions; "on wings of valour", written in the autumn of 1942 by an unknown author, talks of the glory of war in the air, compares the soul of the pilot with an adventurer of an earlier age. The poet compare talks of the adventuresome spirit, the "Viking heart", taking in hand the "helm of...destiny" through the "ocean of adventure". Similarly to Magee's poem there is the link to divinity; "on wings of valour" the author describes the pilot as being "Woden-borne"; a god who inspires warriors and poets who is linked to the sky. "Silver wings", or "the navigator graduate", by Marvin Petersen speaks of the role of the navigator rather than pilot; it too likens the role of the airman to the divine, the "Gods of flight" and uses images of the air and celestial bodies to convey the positive, optimistic outlook common to these poems of flight (Wings over Cambridge, n.d.). Even when the subject matter is less triumphant, as in William Butler Yeats 1919 poem “An Irish airman foresees his own death”, the tone is upbeat and happy. Yeats’ Irishman knows that he “shall meet my fate…among the clouds above” and yet feels “impulse of delight” through the “tumult in the clouds” (Wings over Cambridge, n.d.).

So, when we look at Goldfield's poem of loss and compare that to Magee's joy-filled verse there are a number of things which strike. "To a missing friend!" is filled with loss, remorse and pain echoes through the lines. It is filled with images of solid, real images of earth and of nature. Other works written by poets who have served in the army, in both the First and Second World War, have similar earthy tones and mournful, pain-filled lyrics. The poetry of airmen during both wars, as exemplified by "high flight", is the antithesis of their land-based compatriot’s works. The diction is different, more up-beat and positive, with divine, heavenly and celestial imagery in place of the earthy reality.

Part of this great contrast may be found in the social narrative which accompanies the armies and air forces which took part in the conflicts. The public perception of the army and air force in the 20th century may well have contributed to the themes and types of imagery present in their poetry; the pilots seen as knights in the sky, free from worldly woes, clean and full of adventure, chivalry and near-divine power as contrasted with the weary, tired multitude in khaki, grey and brown who burrow and crawl through mud and barbed wire, locked in a constant struggle for survival.

If, as Gregory (1921) tells us, a portion of the poetry of these great wars was created by young men and women who felt they owed a duty to their peers and to posterity to craft artworks, or by impressionable people who felt the pressure to conform to social perception, then that might go some way to explaining why poetry of the infantry and air force is so different. Once a body of work written for protest or propaganda had reached a critical level other works would draw from these, thus creating a self-perpetuating cycle of verse where the infantryman is wretched and the airman triumphant.

Conflict has had a great impact on those affected by it as demonstrated by the great body of art which has been produced by those who fought, who were involved and who lost friends, family and loved ones. The large number of pieces of poetry which have been written by combatants, ignoring for a moment the nurses, drivers, cooks and other thousands of people who were involved but who did not ever hold a weapon, is testament to how strongly it touched on them. There are dozens of themes and subjects for these poems, from a requiem for fallen friends and comrades to a bold anthem glorifying war and its warriors.

Great emotion has often be married with great inspiration to create poems which have made an enormous impression on the word's psyche; Magee's "high flight" is often used for remembrance of airmen and was famously quoted by U.S. President Ronald Regan after the Challenger disaster, and in much the same way as Brooke's "the soldier" is a commonly chosen piece for funerals and memorials of other servicemen and women.

Appendix 1: Poems

Anonymous - On Wings of Valour

Not looking back to ask the reason why
Our plane is set along this course,
Gladly we shall go, unsullied by remorse;
Nor blaming now the mundane evils of the past
Or that idolatry which planned our flight; we die
To live enthroned forever with the fold
That dwells immortal in the Halls of great Valhalla.
Long-dormant Viking hearts awake at last -
We take in hands as bold as those of old
The helm of our own destiny; and for our vast
Ocean of adventure, instead of waves, the boundless sky.
Once more, inviolate, erect and proud
As those who never down to tyranny have bowed.
On wings of valour. Woden-borne, we fly.

Rupert Brooke – The Soldier

If I should die, think only this of me:
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England's, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.

And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.
  

Goldfield – To a missing friend!

You have no grave, no cross … but you did die.
Maybe in some dark thicket your bones lie
Or you were sunk in swamp in deep of night,
Or Cossacks cruelly robbed you of the light.

And when it was and where and how …and why
I know not: death in forest does not cry.
You are a skull now white-bleached by the rain
Round which the weasel lightly leaves its train.

You are the ploughed earth on which horses stand
You are the grain that once did crown the land
You are the bread the farmer once did eat
You are the strength when peace returns to greet.
(Translated by Peter Appelbaum)

Goldfield - An einen Vermißten Freund!

Dein ist kein Grab, kein Kreuz...du bist vermißt.
Ob du im dunklen Dickicht wo erlegen bist,
Ob du im Sumpf versankst in stiller Nacht,
Ob dich Kosaken langsam umgebracht.

Und wo es war und wie und wann -- warum?
Ich weiß es nicht, der Tod im Wald blieb stumm.
Du bist ein Schädel nun, den Regen bleicht,
Um den im Busch das Wiesel flüchtig streicht.

Nun bist du Land, das einst der Ackrer pflügt,
Du bist das Korn, das einst den Wald besiegt.
Du bist das Brot, das einst der Landmann ißt,
Du bist die Kraft, wenn wieder Friede
  

Cuthbert Hicks - The Blind Man Flies

I am blind: I have never seen
Sun gold nor silver moon,
Nor the fairy faces of flowers,
Nor the radiant noon.

They speak of the dawn and the dusk,
And the smile of a child,
Of the deep red heart of a rose,
As of God, undefiled.

But I learnt from the air to-day
(On a bird’s wings I flew)
That the earth could never contain
All of the God I knew.

I felt the blue mantle of space,
And kissed the cloud's white hem,
I heard the stars’ majestic choir,
And sang my praise with them.

Now joy is mine through my long night,
I do not feel the rod,
For I have danced the streets of heaven,
And touched the face of God

John Gillespie Magee, Jr - High Flight

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds, — and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of — wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there,
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air. . . .

Up, up the long, delirious burning blue
I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or ever eagle flew
—And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God

Marvin C. Peterson - Silver Wings

I’ve won the right to wear these Silver Wings
And see the many awesome sights
Of which the poet sings.

I’ve earned a place among the Gods of flight
Under the Sun’s and moon’s eternal light.

Now I can join that group so proud
Who can look down upon a cloud
And find their way across unmarked space
Where for them alone there is a place.

I can now join that honored fraternity
Whose members look into eternity
Who fly beyond the fetters of Earth
And see at once, yesterday’s death
And tomorrow’s birth.

I stand today upon duty’s threshold here
Where opportunity is shining clear
And know that what tomorrow brings
Depends on how I guide these Silver Wings. 

William Kean Seymour - Fighter Pilot

The tardy dawn has burst in sullen fire,
Grey mists along the level acres lift,
The pilot looks upon his heart's desire,
A clean sky with the westering cloud adrift.
There in the height of his plane
Will mount, and climb again,
And there his spirit, breathing power, will rise
Swift as a swallow's, free, in English skies.

So clear the air; he drinks it as he smiles.
This is his element, his realm of dreams,
In measureless immensity of miles,
Swirling beneath a vault of stellar beams.
For this he grew and planned,
To claim with eye and hand
Unhindered passage where no feet may tread,
Where men, like migrant birds, use wings instead.

His helmet fixed, he gives the word and then,
Waving his squadron as their engines start,
He soars and sings above the world of men,
The beat of battle racing in his heart.
In mortal combat there,
Far in the upper air,
He fights for freedom, one of freedom's sons,
Lone in his aery sphere of blue and bronze.

What destiny is his he does not know;
He does not ask, for asking names a fate;
He goes where duty summons him to go,
He'd sweep undaunted up to heaven's gate.
He holds one purpose well,
In flying to excel,
To roll and loop and bank and dive and spin,
To meet the foe in battle, and to win.

This is the Happy Warrior, this is he.
On his gay courage all we love depends;
His is the valiant heart that keeps us free;
By him a Commonwealth its life defends.
We praise he hands and eyes,
Knight of our war-torn skies,
True son of Britain , fearless in his faith,
Ready to serve her, even unto death.

Appendix 2: German Propaganda, World War 1

"Germania" 1914. A painting by Freidrich August von Kaulbach

(History in Images, n.d.)

"With full steam ahead, we are with you"

(History in Images, n.d.)

 Hindenburg prepares arms for Germany

(History in Images, n.d.)

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