From Gallipoli to Gaza, (Desert Poets of World War One)
Edited by Jill, Duchess of Hamilton, (Simon & Schuster 2003)
For the first time poems written by men who served in the Middle East in World War One have been brought together and these include work by Rupert Brooke, Clem Attlee, T.E. Lawrence (of Arabia) and Siegfried Sassoon.
The Attack at Dawn
‘At every cost,’ they said, ‘it must be done.’
They told us in the early afternoon.
We sit and wait the coming of the sun
We sit in groups—grey groups that watch the moon.
We stretch our legs and murmur half in sleep
And touch the tips of bayonets and yarn.
Our hands are cold. They strangely grope and creep,
Tugging at ends of straps. We wait the dawn!
Some men come stumbling past in single file.
And scrape the trench’s side and scatter sand.
They trip and curse and go. Perhaps we smile.
We wait the dawn!…The dawn is close at hand!
A gentle rustling runs along the line.
‘At every cost,’ they said, ‘it must be done.’
A hundred eyes are staring for the sign.
It’s coming! Look!…Our God’s own laughing sun!
(Leon Gellert, Gallipoli, May 1915)
As the editor notes in her introduction each of the poems included in this excellent anthology is the product of war conveying the poets’ responses to the situation in which they found themselves:
They range from laments for dead friends or brothers to revealing intense longings for home and loved ones, the horror of killing or being killed, to the dreariness of life on campaign, with its boring routines, deprivations, banalities, irritations and unsanitary conditions.
The book is more than just an anthology of poems; it gives us the historical contexts within which the poems come to life and the editor takes us through a whole narrative of the great advance from the sands of Sinai through the rocky hills of Palestine to the streets of Damascus. As Steve Gower, the Director of the Australian War Memorial put it:
It is a story in which the verse evokes the sights, sounds and sensations of a mounted campaign in a harsh climate and terrain against a determined and tough adversary.
Ian Brinton, May 2014