The stage was set, the house was packed,
The famous troop began;
Our laughter thundered, act by act;
Time light as sunbeams ran.
Dance sprang and spun and neared and fled,
Jest chirped at gayest pitch,
Rhythm dazzled, action sped
Most comically rich.
With generals and lame privates both
Such charms worked wonders, till
The show was over: lagging loth
We faced the sunset chill;
And standing on the sandy way,
With the cracked church peering past,
We heard another matinee,
We heard the maniac blast
Of barrage south by Saint Eloi,
And the red lights flaming there
Called madness: Come, my bonny boy,
And dance to the latest air.
To this new concert, white we stood;
Cold certainty held our breath;
While men in the tunnels below Larch Wood
Were kicking men to death.
Many of Blunden’s war poems were written after the war. In Concert Party: Busseboom (written ten years after the war) Blunden vividly recounts one evening’s entertainment enjoyed by the soldiers behind the lines – and then goes on to describe an artillery bombardment the men witness on leaving and alludes shockingly to the battle underground, (the Germans having got into a British tunnel and the trapped defenders having no weapons to fight with). [The Edmund Blunden Collection: Biography http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ww1lit/collections/blunden#poem] In a first edition of Undertones of War, in which this poem appears, Blunden has added next to the title ‘[47th Division Revue]’
Audio Recording of Edmund Blunden
Blunden reads his poem ‘Concert Party: Busseboom’ (1928), he explains about the concert parties behind the lines circa 1917, and after reading the poem talks about that particular event. A recording made with his biographer Barry Webb. http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ww1lit/collections/item/9420
“Concert Party: Busseboom,” by Blunden, Edmund (1896-1974). © First World War Poetry Digital Archive, accessed August 5, 2015, http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ww1lit/collections/document/9521