The Soldier by Rupert Brooke: Read by Sophie
Okonedo | Remembering World War 1 | More 4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iAFnhJojMYY
If I should die, think only this of me:
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is forever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England's, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by the suns of home.
And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.
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My stretcher is one scarlet stain,
And as I tries to scrape it clean,
I tell you what – I’m sick of pain,
For all I’ve heard, for all I’ve seen;
Around me is the hellish night,
And as the war’s red rim I trace,
I wonder if in Heaven’s height
Our God don’t turn away his face.
In dripping darkness far and near,
All night I’ve sought those woeful ones.
Dawn suddens up and still I hear
The crimson chorus of the guns.
Look, like a ball of blood the sun
Hangs o’er the scene of wrath and wrong,
“Quick! Stretcher-bearers on the run!”,
Oh Prince of Peace! How long, how long ?”
I don’t care whose the crime may be,
I hold no brief for kin or clan;
I feel no hate, I only see
As man destroys his brother man;
I wave no flag, I only know
As here beside the dead I wait,
A million hearts are weighed with woe,
A million homes are desolate.
By Tommy Crawford https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2JNcBHop8E
2

Oh, oh, oh, it's a lovely war,
Who wouldn't be a soldier, eh?
Oh, it's a shame to take the pay;
As soon as reveille is gone,
We feel just as heavy as lead,
But we never get up till the sergeant
Brings us breakfast up to bed.
Oh, oh, oh, it's a lovely war,
What do we want with eggs and ham,
When we've got plum and apple jam?
Form fours, right turn,
How shall we spend the money we earn?
Oh, oh, oh, it's a lovely war.
Upo to your waist in water,
Up to your eyes in slush,
Using the kind of language,
That makes the sergeant blush.
Who wouldn't join the army?
That's what we all inquire;
Don't we pity the poor civilian,
Sitting beside the fire.
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Oh, oh, oh, it's a lovely war,
Who wouldn't be a soldier, eh?
Oh, it's a shame to take the pay;
As sonn as reveille is gone,
We feel just as heavy as lead,
But we never get up till the sergeant
Brings us breakfast up to bed.
Oh, oh, oh, it's a lovely war,
What do we want with eggs and ham,
When we've got plum and apple jam?
Form fours, right turn,
How shall we spend the money we earn?
Oh, oh, oh, it's a lovely war.
From ‘Oh What a Lovely War’
By Joan Littlewood

From ‘Oh What a Lovely War’
By Joan Littlewood
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6
Constable poem
Original held in the Essex Record Office
Poem by Special Constable 353
(D/Z 137/1)

The New Year Bells are ringing
A note of peace to all
And soon the poor red Specials
Will have their final call
No more the Hooters Siren
Will sound its shrilling screams
No more the Generals whistle
Will rouse us from our dreams
No more in icy blackness
The Reservoir to guard
Or tramping round the viaduct
And the smelling railway yard
No more in midnight watched
We wait the Zeppelin’s hum
Or watch the bursting shrapnel
As the raiding Gothas come
No more our worthy Sergeant
Will send us out at night
To watch and ward the Borough
And see the lights too bright
We may not get a medal
We cannot win VC
We have only done our duty
Without reward or fee.
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8

http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/schoolradio/ww1/audio_resource_6.mp3
It's a long way to Tipperary,
It's a long way to go.
It's a long way to Tipperary
To the sweetest girl I know!
Goodbye Piccadilly,
Farewell Leicester Square!
It's a long long way to Tipperary,
But my heart's right there.
9
Pack up your troubles in your old kit-bag,
And smile, smile, smile,
While you've a lucifer to light your fag,
Smile, boys, that's the style.
What's the use of worrying?
It never was worth while, so
Pack up your troubles in your old kit-bag,
And smile, smile, smile.

10

To Essex then, one hundred years ago to sun-scorched, dusty fields and parched stream beds.
Where windfall codlings pock the russet earth,
September’s fruits come early, and to waste.
At Boreham Reverend Yonge mops cobs of sweat and begs his guv’nor for a dose of rain as horticultural ladies trim their blooms, they nip and bud and dream of red rosettes.
Down Thaxted way, the labourers are striking it’s coming up for forty wage-less days.
They roam the country lanes in search of scabs, as Pankhurst comes, the red flag on her car.
The trains are packed from third right through to first, the coastal steamers coat the blue sky white as Britain leaves her heartlands for her shore.
From Romford, Dagenham and Tilbury
A storm is building in the stifling air: in Chelmsford they can talk of nothing else, the newsagents are desperate for vendors, the tittletattle’s milled right through the night.
Until on Tuesday, everybody knows.
In Southend hundreds gather at the Standard to read the words they posted in the window.
The tiny wives, umbrellaed by their men.
We’re twenty-one today, we’ll make the Kaiser pay
The regulars demob down Mersea Road while Reverend Yonge in Boreham writes in black:
Bella horrida bella … smite, hell, ruin.
L U K E W R I G H T near forty-thousand, swap the clock for sand.
The boarding houses with their lists of rules and fearsome landladies are full, although it’s quieter than last year. They know why.
11

The ancient oak on Freshwell Street is jaundiced in the Autumn sun as Clementina clips her way to work.
A window pane plays mirror to the mid-blue of her uniform and though she’s late, she stops stock-still and stares.
The red-cross on the armband, the starched white of the hat, black boots that pinch, the bag balm on her palms.
Pulled-in, pinned back, with pale-blue eyes it takes the girl a breathless beat to realise it’s her who’s staring back.
It’s Clem.
Our Clem.
The messy-haired adventurer and story queen, pied piper to her brothers, lost in June.
But no one’s called her Clem for months, those summers seems an age ago.
They linger like a half-remembered tune.
The chance to go and do her bit had won against her life at home she’d kissed her mum and hugged the boys to bits.
But as she pitted guilt against adventure with the VAD she never stopped to think what it might do.
And now she knows: this woman here will never lead a squawking gang of children through the Essex water fields.
And as the thought occurs to her it darts across the pale blue eyes, she blinks the thing away and turns for work.
L U K E W R I G H T
12

Doris and her sister Maggie shook awake by mum one night as starlight shows a large dark shape in deathly, whirring flight.
the churches and the railway line where sloes and dark, fat blackberries grow, where thatched roof pubs and gothic schools are all the young girls know.
The oilcloth of the bedroom floor is icy underneath their feet, they struggle with the steamed-up sash and peer out on the street.
He’s likely near enough to Crittall’s where in peace time men annealed those futuristic window frames in toughened Essex steel;
As overhead a Kapitan unsure above this foreign land turns the zeppelin’s engines off to better understand where now their women heat and cool the liquid fire for darker ends, the grim, efficient work of war.
He gives the order, sends
The oilcloth and the sash stayed with her and the news the morning after a tiny girl was crushed and killed by chimney brick and rafter.
But mostly Doris thought about her kind old dad away at war the picture of him coming home was what she chose to store.
So handsome in his postman’s blue much better than the army green he never smacked or chided them or told them what he’d seen.
exactly where his airship is and as he does St Michael’s bell tolls and tells this Kapitan what Doris knows too well.
a thousand screaming kilos down upon the brisk Spring Essex night a silent rip through country air and then the sky turns white.
He’s cleared the patchwork Essex fields, dirt farmyards and the gladed copse, he’s reached the jostled terraces and little shuttered shops,
Memory’s a funny thing and later, when she wrote it down
Doris was unable to recall the burning town.
L U K E W R I G H T
13

On Market Street near Harwich dock the shore-leave sailors stop the clock and fill their throats with yards of beer as if the final days were here.
Debouched and broached, The King’s Head groans with battered thick-slurred baritones as fear is scrubbed with boozy prayer in gas-lit, blue-tinged, smokey air.
And can you blame these sozzled kids for wanting some escape from it?
Tomorrow they haul anchor then they sail away from homes and friends.
From Danbury; from Peasenhall; from Edmonton; from Coggeshall; from terraces up pot-holed lanes from hamlets never touched by trains from farmhouse, workhouse, market hill from trading streets that chirp and till from nooks that never make a noise apprentices and grocer’s boys step up and say that they are keen despite the fact that they’ve all seen the letters home, the telegrams, and fresh-faced widows pushing prams.
They’ve watched their brothers not return they’ve heard of how their young lungs burned with gas in reeking sodden ruts and now they feel it in their guts.
The churn of dark uncertain days they gulp it down, the newly brave play brutes and beasts until they’re sore and summon what it takes to leave for war.
L U K E W R I G H T

Meet Mrs Godley, well to-do
Victorian in sober blue and not content to chat and sit
No, Mrs Godley does her bit.
and wasted, really, like her friends.
So at her threadbare tether’s end our Mrs Godley takes a stand and grasps the war with eager hands.
Or tries to, but it’s rather hard her Peter joined the Old Boy’s Guard her son went off to man a tank but no one wants her in the ranks.
Full-bodied like a vintage port she scours the streets of Dovercourt with firm resolve and hawk-like eyes in search of snooping German spies.
It seems a woman’s work in war is more of what it was before: ironing, cooking, washing, scrubbing while they all give the Bosch a drubbing.
And who’s this here? Suspicious pair all nordic hue and flaxen hair, peculiar manner, funny hats no Englishman would dress like that!
A zestful woman in a time where bus drivers were old and blind before they ever wore a dress.
No voice in church, committee-less
You there boy, now are you willing?
Help your country! Earn a shilling!
Good lad. Operation Rhine: go ask that brace of chaps the time.
She sends him with a zealous push then darts behind a nearby bush to listen as they answer him and when they do the news is grim!
A stuttered mess of Zees and Vees so Mrs Godley’s out the trees flag wagging her white parasol to fetch a military patrol.
Here they come now, almost quickly
(asthmatic, flat-feet, over fifty) whistles blowing, touch of flap inexpertly they seize chaps.
But later down the local nick our heroine is feeling sick:
Belgians, Madam, no need for fuss, best leave the espionage to us.
Your efforts might be better spent on errands with a gentler bent.
So Mrs Godley set off home embarrassed, patronised, alone to measure out her life in jams and wait for tragic telegrams.
L U K E W R I G H T
15

We're the cousins, who ruled over dozens
King George, Tsar Nick and Kaiser Billy
When the century started, we could hardly be parted
But that was long before, the frightful First World War
I'm King George and when young I forged an alliance with these two
Through Queen Vic we were related, together world power she created
I'm Tsar Nicholas with George mischievous, swapped uniforms at posh dos
We looked like twin set, had matching beards
Right royal family, if a little weird
Drove advisors round the bend, so all that friendship had to end
We're relations, crowned by our nations
Great Britain, Russia and Germany
When our governments fell out, peaceful relations put in doubt
Conditions perfect for, the frightful First World War
I'm Kaiser Wilhelm, I kind of felt a bit left out from the rest
They had beards, I only had a moustache
Feared my withered arm gave me less panache
I loved the military, thought at diplomacy, I would be the best
We sent telegrams, hoped to stop the bombs
They weren't worth the paper they were written on
I called England mad March hares
You didn't help avert war there
16

Now all leaders that all succeed us
Great Britain, Russia, both against me
I was in charge of German troops
But you proved to be hopeless, oops
The commanders they ignored, in the frightful First World War
My family ties embarrassing, our kinship now a hassle
I changed my German surname to Windsor like the castle
Then Russian Revolution came Nick said "Help me mate!"
I couldn't support him, had to leave him to his fate
Execution! oh
And then the war, was no more
We won, we lost, call it a score draw
I was the only one left in charge
I ran away but still at large
And all this frightful war could do, was set up World War Two
Which was us against you
Boo boo be doo!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXmMT4sETu8
17

https://vimeo.com/75201584
18

19

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.
Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!
And
—An ecstasy of fumbling
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling flound’ring like a man in fire or lime.—
Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, —
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.
In all my dreams before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning .
By Wilfred Owen
20
Read by Christopher Eccleston | Remembering World War 1 | C4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qB4cdRgIcB8

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
— Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells;
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs, —
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.
What candles may be held to speed them all?
Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes.
The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.
By Wilfred Owen
21
Read by Sean Bean | Remembering World War 1 | More 4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRj4DR5JTdY