The poems are written by a soldier and reflect a soldier’s outlook. Mud, blood and khaki are rather conspicuously absent. They are, in fact, the last things a soldier wishes to think or talk about.
Bishop Frodsham, preaching in Gloucester Cathedral, after visiting the Troops in France, quoted the following poem in a passage which admirably expresses the feelings of most of our fighting men.
“To suppose that these men enjoy the fighting would be sheer nonsense. The soldier does not want to go on killing and maiming Germans or Turks. He wants to get the dreadful war finished, so that he can get back to England again. But he wants the matter fought to a finish because he has seen in the villages and towns of France what German domination means. It has made him think furiously, as the French say. Many regiments and ships’ companies while away the impracticable hours by publishing little newspapers.
“The _Fifth Gloucester Gazette_ is one of these journals. We are proud of the courage and the gaiety these little papers show. We laugh at their quips and jokes: then suddenly we find that the corners of our mouths are quivering and the tears are gathering in our eyes. We see that the boys are thinking about England below their gaiety. One young poet lifts the veil in this exquisite little rondeau--
“‘If we return, will England be Just England still to you and me-- The place where we must earn our bread? We who have walked among the dead, And watched the smile of agony, And seen the price of liberty, Which we have taken carelessly From other hands. Nay, we shall dread: If we return, Dread lest we hold blood-guiltily The thing that men have died to free. Our English fields shall blossom red In all the blood that has been shed, By men whose guardians are we, If we return.’”
That is perhaps the keynote of a book which the author has dedicated to all dead and living comrades who have loved England.
Commanding the Fifth Battalion of the Gloucestershire Regiment in France.
PREFACE BY COLONEL J. H. COLLETT, C.M.G. vii
ROBERT HERRICK SOLILOQUIZES ON THE C.O. 36
_I’m homesick for my hills again-- My hills again! To see above the Severn plain Unscabbarded against the sky The blue high blade of Cotswold lie; The giant clouds go royally By jagged Malvern with a train Of shadows. Where the land is low Like a huge imprisoning O I hear a heart that’s sound and high, I hear the heart within me cry: “I’m homesick for my hills again-- My hills again! Cotswold or Malvern, sun or rain! My hills again!”_