Herbert Read was unlike many of the young, privileged Englishmen who left university to prove themselves in the bloody cauldron of war. Born in Yorkshire, he was the eldest child of a tenant farmer who died when he was still young. Because they didn’t own the farm, the family had to leave. Read was sent to a school for orphans. His mother took a job managing a laundry.
Read considered studying medicine after graduation. As a way to pay for it, he joined the local unit of the Royal Army Medical Corps and received a commission in the Green Howards, a Yorkshire Regiment. By the time he entered the University of Leeds, he’d decided that medicine wasn’t for him, so he transferred from the Medical Corps to the Officer Training Corps, where he found himself surrounded by men who had come through Eton or other public schools. Compared to them, Read felt provincial.
When the War broke out, Read left his studies and was shipped overseas. He found that he was far more comfortable dealing with the sixty or so men in his platoon than the other officers. His platoon was filled with men who had done hard work in the mines and factories of Durham and North Yorkshire. Many were older and more experienced than he, who became a captain in his early twenties, but he developed a good repoire with them. His fellow officers struck him as “snobbish and intolerant.”
He soon realized that “all the proud pretensions which men had acquired from a conventional environment” became insignificant at the front, and his fatalistic soldiers with their “Every bullet has it billet. What’s the use of worryin’?” attitude coped better than “men of mere brute strength, the footballers and school captains.”
Politically, Herbert Read was what the English call a “Quietist Anarchist.” He was no waver of flags and felt no fervor for one people over another. He expressed hope that the relationships that he had developed in the trenches would lead to new social movement after the war, and that class conflict and nationalities would be abandoned for a more egalitarian, universal social order. He saw signs that the world had wearied of war and was ready to put aside nationalism in this remembrance:
Read considered studying medicine after graduation. As a way to pay for it, he joined the local unit of the Royal Army Medical Corps and received a commission in the Green Howards, a Yorkshire Regiment. By the time he entered the University of Leeds, he’d decided that medicine wasn’t for him, so he transferred from the Medical Corps to the Officer Training Corps, where he found himself surrounded by men who had come through Eton or other public schools. Compared to them, Read felt provincial.
When the War broke out, Read left his studies and was shipped overseas. He found that he was far more comfortable dealing with the sixty or so men in his platoon than the other officers. His platoon was filled with men who had done hard work in the mines and factories of Durham and North Yorkshire. Many were older and more experienced than he, who became a captain in his early twenties, but he developed a good repoire with them. His fellow officers struck him as “snobbish and intolerant.”
He soon realized that “all the proud pretensions which men had acquired from a conventional environment” became insignificant at the front, and his fatalistic soldiers with their “Every bullet has it billet. What’s the use of worryin’?” attitude coped better than “men of mere brute strength, the footballers and school captains.”
Politically, Herbert Read was what the English call a “Quietist Anarchist.” He was no waver of flags and felt no fervor for one people over another. He expressed hope that the relationships that he had developed in the trenches would lead to new social movement after the war, and that class conflict and nationalities would be abandoned for a more egalitarian, universal social order. He saw signs that the world had wearied of war and was ready to put aside nationalism in this remembrance:
In April, 1918, when on a daylight ‘contact’ patrol with two of my men, we suddenly confronted, round some mound or excavation, a German patrol of the same strength. We were perhaps twenty yards from each other, fully visible. I waved a weary hand, as if to say: What is the use of killing each other? The German officer seemed to understand, and both parties turned and made their way back to their own trenches. Reprehensible conduct, no doubt, but in April, 1918, the war-weariness of the infantry was stronger than its pugnacity, on both sides of the line
However, when the end finally came, Read found that he had lost too much to sustain much hope. His youngest brother, who had followed him into the Green Howards and had served on the Italian Front, died of a bullet shot in the last few months of war, leaving him in a state of grief that allowed no sympathy or consolation. Others, he knew, felt similarly. “We left the war as we entered it: dazed, indifferent, incapable of any creative action. We had acquired only one new quality: exhaustion.”
When the Armistice came, a month later, I had no feelings, except possibly of self-congratulation. By then I had been sent to dreary barracks on the outskirts of Canterbury. There were misty fields around us, and perhaps a pealing bell to celebrate our victory. But my heart was numb and my mind dismayed: I turned to the fields and walked away from all human contacts.
Read, who earned both the Distinguished Service Order and the Military Cross, wrote two volumes of poetry based upon his war experiences: Songs of Chaos (1915) and Naked Warriors (1919). His poems are seen as a bridge between the lyrical forms used by Owen, Sassoon, and Graves and the epic form used by David Jones in In Parenthesis. His poem, Kneeshaw goes to War, which I have included here, tells the story of one soldier who finds his personal meaning through, or in spite of, the horrific experiences he endured during the war.
Aerial view of the Polygonveld (Polygon Wood) 25 June 1917. The town of Zonnebeke shelled to annihilation during WWI.
Kneeshaw goes to War
1
Ernest Kneeshaw grew
In the forest of his dreams
Like a woodland flower whose anaemic petals
Need the sun.
Life was a far perspective
Of high black columns
Flanking, arching and encircling him.
He never, even vaguely, tried to pierce
The gloom about him,
But was content to contemplate
His finger-nails and wrinkled boots.
He might at least have perceived
A sexual atmosphere;
But even when his body burned and urged
Like the buds and roots around him,
Abash'd by the will-less promptings of his flesh,
He continued to contemplate his feet.
2
Kneeshaw went to war.
On bleak moors and among harsh fellows
They set about with much painstaking
To straighten his drooping back:
But still his mind reflected things
Like a cold steel mirror — emotionless;
Yet in reflecting he became accomplish'd
And, to some extent,
Divested of ancestral gloom.
Then Kneeshaw crossed the sea.
At Boulogne
He cast a backward glance across the harbours
And saw there a forest of assembled masts and rigging.
Like the sweep from a releas'd dam,
His thoughts flooded unfamiliar paths:
This forest was congregated
From various climates and strange seas:
Hadn't each ship some separate memory
Of sunlit scenes or arduous waters?
Didn't each bring in the high glamour
Of conquering force?
Wasn't the forest-gloom of their assembly
A body built of living cells,
Of personalities and experiences
— A witness of heroism
Co-existent with man?
And that dark forest of his youth --
Couldn't he liberate the black columns
Flanking, arching, encircling him with dread?
Couldn't he let them spread from his vision like a fleet
Taking the open sea,
Disintegrating into light and colour and the fragrance of winds?
And perhaps in some thought they would return
Laden with strange merchandise --
And with the passing thought
Pass unregretted into far horizons.
These were Kneeshaw's musings
Whilst he yet dwelt in the romantic fringes.
3
Then, with many other men,
He was transported in a cattle-truck
To the scene of war.
For a while chance was kind
Save for an inevitable
Searing of the mind.
But later Kneeshaw's war
Became intense.
The ghastly desolation
Sank into men's hearts and turned them black --
Cankered them with horror.
Kneeshaw felt himself
A cog in some great evil engine,
Unwilling, but revolv'd tempestuously
By unseen springs.
He plunged with listless mind
Into the black horror.
4
There are a few left who will find it hard to forget
Polygonveld.
The earth was scarr'd and broken
By torrents of plunging shells;
Then wash'd and sodden with autumnal rains.
And Polygonbeke
(Perhaps a rippling stream
In the days of Kneeshaw's gloom)
Spread itself like a fatal quicksand, --
A sucking, clutching death.
They had to be across the beke
And in their line before dawn.
A man who was marching by Kneeshaw's side
Hesitated in the middle of the mud,
And slowly sank, weighted down by equipment and arms.
He cried for help;
Rifles were stretched to him;
He clutched and they tugged,
But slowly he sank.
His terror grew --
Grew visibly when the viscous ooze
Reached his neck.
And there he seemed to stick,
Sinking no more.
They could not dig him out --
The oozing mud would flow back again.
The dawn was very near.
An officer shot him through the head:
Not a neat job — the revolver
Was too close.
5
Then the dawn came, silver on the wet brown earth.
Kneeshaw found himself in the second wave:
The unseen springs revolved the cog
Through all the mutations of that storm of death.
He started when he heard them cry " Dig in!"
He had to think and couldn't for a while.
Then he seized a pick from the nearest man
And clawed passionately upon the churned earth.
With satisfaction his pick
Cleft the skull of a buried man.
Kneeshaw tugged the clinging pick,
Saw its burden and shrieked.
For a second or two he was impotent
Vainly trying to recover his will, but his senses prevailing.
Then mercifully
A hot blast and riotous detonation
Hurled his mangled body
Into the beautiful peace of coma.
6
There came a day when Kneeshaw,
Minus a leg, on crutches,
Stalked the woods and hills of his native land.
And on the hills he would sing this war-song:
The forest gloom breaks:
The wild black masts
Seaward sweep on adventurous ways:
I grip my crutches and keep
A lonely view.
I stand on this hill and accept
The pleasure my flesh dictates
I count not kisses nor take
Too serious a view of tobacco.
Judas no doubt was right
In a mental sort of way:
For he betrayed another and so
With purpose was self-justified.
But I delivered my body to fear --
I was a bloodier fool than he.
I stand on this hill and accept
The flowers at my feet and the deep
Beauty of the still tarn:
Chance that gave me a crutch and a view
Gave me these.
The soul is not a dogmatic affair
Like manliness, colour, and light;
But these essentials there be:
To speak truth and so rule oneself
That other folk may rede.
Ernest Kneeshaw grew
In the forest of his dreams
Like a woodland flower whose anaemic petals
Need the sun.
Life was a far perspective
Of high black columns
Flanking, arching and encircling him.
He never, even vaguely, tried to pierce
The gloom about him,
But was content to contemplate
His finger-nails and wrinkled boots.
He might at least have perceived
A sexual atmosphere;
But even when his body burned and urged
Like the buds and roots around him,
Abash'd by the will-less promptings of his flesh,
He continued to contemplate his feet.
2
Kneeshaw went to war.
On bleak moors and among harsh fellows
They set about with much painstaking
To straighten his drooping back:
But still his mind reflected things
Like a cold steel mirror — emotionless;
Yet in reflecting he became accomplish'd
And, to some extent,
Divested of ancestral gloom.
Then Kneeshaw crossed the sea.
At Boulogne
He cast a backward glance across the harbours
And saw there a forest of assembled masts and rigging.
Like the sweep from a releas'd dam,
His thoughts flooded unfamiliar paths:
This forest was congregated
From various climates and strange seas:
Hadn't each ship some separate memory
Of sunlit scenes or arduous waters?
Didn't each bring in the high glamour
Of conquering force?
Wasn't the forest-gloom of their assembly
A body built of living cells,
Of personalities and experiences
— A witness of heroism
Co-existent with man?
And that dark forest of his youth --
Couldn't he liberate the black columns
Flanking, arching, encircling him with dread?
Couldn't he let them spread from his vision like a fleet
Taking the open sea,
Disintegrating into light and colour and the fragrance of winds?
And perhaps in some thought they would return
Laden with strange merchandise --
And with the passing thought
Pass unregretted into far horizons.
These were Kneeshaw's musings
Whilst he yet dwelt in the romantic fringes.
3
Then, with many other men,
He was transported in a cattle-truck
To the scene of war.
For a while chance was kind
Save for an inevitable
Searing of the mind.
But later Kneeshaw's war
Became intense.
The ghastly desolation
Sank into men's hearts and turned them black --
Cankered them with horror.
Kneeshaw felt himself
A cog in some great evil engine,
Unwilling, but revolv'd tempestuously
By unseen springs.
He plunged with listless mind
Into the black horror.
4
There are a few left who will find it hard to forget
Polygonveld.
The earth was scarr'd and broken
By torrents of plunging shells;
Then wash'd and sodden with autumnal rains.
And Polygonbeke
(Perhaps a rippling stream
In the days of Kneeshaw's gloom)
Spread itself like a fatal quicksand, --
A sucking, clutching death.
They had to be across the beke
And in their line before dawn.
A man who was marching by Kneeshaw's side
Hesitated in the middle of the mud,
And slowly sank, weighted down by equipment and arms.
He cried for help;
Rifles were stretched to him;
He clutched and they tugged,
But slowly he sank.
His terror grew --
Grew visibly when the viscous ooze
Reached his neck.
And there he seemed to stick,
Sinking no more.
They could not dig him out --
The oozing mud would flow back again.
The dawn was very near.
An officer shot him through the head:
Not a neat job — the revolver
Was too close.
5
Then the dawn came, silver on the wet brown earth.
Kneeshaw found himself in the second wave:
The unseen springs revolved the cog
Through all the mutations of that storm of death.
He started when he heard them cry " Dig in!"
He had to think and couldn't for a while.
Then he seized a pick from the nearest man
And clawed passionately upon the churned earth.
With satisfaction his pick
Cleft the skull of a buried man.
Kneeshaw tugged the clinging pick,
Saw its burden and shrieked.
For a second or two he was impotent
Vainly trying to recover his will, but his senses prevailing.
Then mercifully
A hot blast and riotous detonation
Hurled his mangled body
Into the beautiful peace of coma.
6
There came a day when Kneeshaw,
Minus a leg, on crutches,
Stalked the woods and hills of his native land.
And on the hills he would sing this war-song:
The forest gloom breaks:
The wild black masts
Seaward sweep on adventurous ways:
I grip my crutches and keep
A lonely view.
I stand on this hill and accept
The pleasure my flesh dictates
I count not kisses nor take
Too serious a view of tobacco.
Judas no doubt was right
In a mental sort of way:
For he betrayed another and so
With purpose was self-justified.
But I delivered my body to fear --
I was a bloodier fool than he.
I stand on this hill and accept
The flowers at my feet and the deep
Beauty of the still tarn:
Chance that gave me a crutch and a view
Gave me these.
The soul is not a dogmatic affair
Like manliness, colour, and light;
But these essentials there be:
To speak truth and so rule oneself
That other folk may rede.
Jennifer Bohnhoff used to teach high school and middle school English, and she often included a unit on the World War I poets. She has now retired and writes from the quietness of her own mountain home. He most recent book, A Blaze of Poppies, is about the experience of two New Mexicans during the Great War.
