A War Poem of Sorts
—to Robert Thomas Waldock, who died in 1983
The graveyard’s last but one dug hole was filled
by Robert Thomas Waldock who had fought
in Flanders, where so many men were killed,
and where the twentieth century was wrought.
His picture’s in a treasured album, seen
in Ashwell’s small museum. Robert stands
beside a plinth, in uniform, and keen
to bash the Bosch in fabled Gallic lands.
The teacher at the village school compiled
this album of his boys who went to war,
boys who would be boys, and sometimes riled,
but when enlisting, heroes to the core.
One in six were slaughtered on the field,
by bullet, bomb, disease, while others drowned
in gas, or mud-filled craters (Death’s due yield
’twixt trench and no-man’s-land) their lives unwound.
Those black-and-white and sepia portraits bear
the name of every pupil. If their fate
was death, they ‘fell’, for died’s no word to share,
and next to this he scrawled the tragic date.
A limestone cross’s pedestal recalls
the village men who died in World War One;
the farmhands, blacksmiths, servants in the halls
of country houses ere they faced the Hun.
The Waldocks feature large ’mongst names engraved
upon that war memorial, in bold
lead lettering. Yet those from Death’s scythe saved
in place of names saw faces never old.
A lifetime Robert lived beyond those pals;
a time to court, to wed, to pass on life
while future maiden aunts stayed spouseless gals
ordained to never be a loving wife.
And what of that last grave? When I last saw
where Robert lay, his neighbour was a child,
a victim of a vehicle’s hungry maw,
her three-score-and-ten-year-long span defiled.
What irony this little girl should rest
beside an aged warrior whose friends
died youthful, too, reminding us the best
amongst us sometimes meet untimely ends.
Paul A. Freeman is the author of Rumours of Ophir, a crime novel which was taught in Zimbabwean high schools and has been translated into German. In addition to having two novels, a children’s book and an 18,000-word narrative poem (Robin Hood and Friar Tuck: Zombie Killers!) commercially published, Paul is the author of hundreds of published short stories, poems and articles.
Thank you, Paul, for this poignant and sensitive reflection. It’s truly an experience to read it. Best wishes, Bruce.
Thanks, Bruce. This story has been untold for over forty years. It was challenging to pull the threads together, but I felt it was time.
Beautiful to read Paul at this time of year. Thank you.
Thanks, Jeff. I noticed the number of Armistice Day / Veterans’ Day poems has declined over the years, and had a ‘lest they forget’ moment inspired by that little Hertfordshire village I worked in over four decades ago and its inhabitants.
Another wonderful story was from a young lady with a German name, whose grandfather had been a German POW in the village, met her grandmother, married her and stayed on after the war ended.
Maybe that story for next year!
Good idea, Paul, to make remembrance of a village, and to recall one man from that place whose life was much changed by the Great War, though he survived it. This leads thoughts toward sober recollections of the human family, including those you pose between Robert Waldock and the little girl now lying near him. On trips to Britain, I remember being appalled at village graveyards with so many deaths in the 1915 to 1918 range. So “the twentieth century was wrought.”
Thanks for reading and taking the time to comment, Margaret.
When I arrived at Ashwell, the village was still mourning the young girl who got run down. During my stay, I worked one day a week in the village museum, where I made archival records of the album of ‘old boys’ I describe in the poem. I also was recording every legible gravestone, which eventually led me to the cemetery, where Robert Waldock (one of the soldiers pictured in the album) was buried, next to the cemetery’s last burial, the little girl. Ever since, I’ve occasionally thought about the waste of the First War, and how Robert had had all those years beyond that his comrades never experienced, and all those years of adolescence, adulthood and old age the girl would never experience.
I’m glad I’ve managed to put it all down on paper in a poem, but doubt it’s out of my system.
The best word to describe this poem is “trenchant.” As an American with European roots, I weep for our many lost branches, and I wonder whether all the sacrifices were worth it, considering where Europe stands today. Carry on, Paul.
Lest we forget.
There were several other tragic WWI stories in the village. There was the POW story I described in the reply to Margaret, and there was a soldier called Covington whose war grave was dated 1923, and who died of his wounds (mustard gas inhalation) years after the event.
As for whether it was all worth it, on both sides of the Atlantic we’ve seen a rise in political correctness to a ridiculous extent, followed by an ongoing rise in authoritarianism and the suppression of freedoms we once took for granted. Sadly, it’s difficult for many folk to step back and recognise this patently obvious reality.
Carry on, CD.
A very fine poem, Paul.
There was no reason at all for World War I to happen. None whatsoever. And World War II came directly out of that first war, just as a flower will come out of a seed.
Usually, in retrospect we see that wars are more about ego than anything else. There’s a scene in the book All Quiet on the Western Front where the common soldiery are talking about how the war started, about one country insulting another and wondering what that means.
I was twenty when the story within this poem unfolded, unused to the death of an adult, let alone a child. Perhaps why it’s been in the back of my mind for so long.
Thanks for reading and commenting.
Very well and movingly told, Paul.
Thank you, Cynthia.