Perhaps the most unusual quality of Blunden's war poetry is that he acknowledged that even amidst the senseless slaughter there could be, and were, moments of contrasting beauty. Most of his work revolves around the countryside of England and while serving in the Royal Sussex Regiment at twenty years old it was in May 1915 when he made his way to the trenches at Festubert. A village in northern France, the ground was marshy preventing the digging of deep trenches so a series of grouse butts (islands) were built above ground but since they were constructed of sandbags the security they gave was dismal at best. The pollard s he refers to in the second stanza were trees cut back for the purposes of allowing renewed growth, but here it was the work of artillery. Festubert was destroyed in a fierce battle between Germans and an allied force of British, Canadians and Indians. The Festubert attack was launched by Sir Douglas Haig on the evening of May 15th. They made rapid progress initially forcing the German Sixth Army to retreat to lines just in front of the village. The attack continued for twelve days with the British having suffered some 16,000 casualties. In due time the battalion moved south to Givenchy and Cuinchy on the La Bassee Canal.
. . . not trenches but breast work
sandbagged up and divided into Islands 8 men on each there being 16 of these
Islands.
We had to take two days rations in with us, which proved fatal for us, for Mr.
Rat invited Mrs. Rat and all their little ones, to a nice feed and after they had finished
their first meal, there was not much for us, so we had to go hungry next day, but the
bit of cheese they did leave proved fatal for them, for we used it as bait on the end
of our bayonets, then they would go for the cheese, and we just pulled the trigger and
Mr. Rat was dead.
We left here on the 1st Dec. for Givenchy. We went in the trenches
there on the 3rd December about 5 pm, and the following morning the Germans blew
up a mine right under our sap (dug-out), making all our platoon casualties except four
of us, who had rolled in the mud which was about two foot deep, leaving us like mud
men. We had to smile when we saw each other covered in mud, and looking round
towards the German trench, what should meet our eye but a nice-sized German
standing with his arms folded and his hair as black as jet parted in the middle. There
he was laughing at us.
So Capt. Woodhouse says, `Porter, can you throw a bomb?'
I said, `Yes, Sir.'
So he said, `Put these in your mitt', at the same time giving me a few
Mills no. 5, and taking a few himself led the way down towards the sap, me following
close behind him.
He said, `Let's see if we cannot move that square faced creature up
there', meaning of course the German.
You might say what about your rifles but that
was out of the question for our rifles were as bad as we were, covered with mud. So
we threw out bombs and made the Boche move his standings, only to come back with
a bomb and throw it at Capt. Woodhouse, and would have blown him to bits but I
called him away just as it exploded. So we went back for some more bombs and this
time we moved him and he never came back again. So we returned to our trench
victorious.
Time rolled on that day and I was called as orderly to an Officer, so the first
thing I had to (do) was to show this officer up to the front line, where we had had the exciting time early in the morning. It would now be about 6 pm. When I was leading
him up the trench, I came across a working party of R.E.'s and when I caught up to
the rear man of this party he calmly turned round, loaded his rifle and would have fired
at my Officer, but I was in time. I caught hold of the rifle and took it from him, but he
turned round and got hold of another and loaded it and pointed to the Officer again
and I stopped him again and asked him what he was doing. He said that the corporal
behind me had been nagging at them all the way up the trench but when I told him
it was my officer he apologised to the Officer saying that he thought it was the
Corporal.
That night we spent running up and down these trenches full of water and
mud and dead men, and parts of dead men, legs and arms floating about the water,
which had been caused by the mine early in the previous morning . . . At 10.30 am
we were relieved by the 9th Royal Fusiliers. We went back to the village of Givenchy
where we had our Christmas dinner, corned beef stew and plum pudding, which ran
out at one teaspoonful per man, there being one basin of pudding for thirty men.
What
hopes! Tommy in the firing line gets his plum pudding. Anyway we was all very pleased
to be out of those trenches, if only for a few hours.
It is remarkable to see and think of what it may have been like for these two men, comrades as writers in arms. While Porter's acceptance of the immediacy of death and the dead, and the meager
Christmas rations, contrasts well with the background presented by Edward Blunden,
I have more than a suspicion that Blunden is not conversing me as the reader at all, but with the presence not visible. With pastoral warning he addresses the unseen over my shoulder, and amusement fades when his fancy chills it. At once an appearance of a cozy conversation becomes disturbingly intangible. Uneasily as I persist in trying to find out what he has secreted in the blank spaces; what he might be overhearing, by chance, allusive but exciting reminiscences by men out of sight. There is loveliness in the narrative of dragon flies skipping about on the surface of the water while for a moment by the light of a star-shell I can glimpse with him the horrific sight of dead men