On Somme by Ivor Gurney

 

Suddenly into the still air burst thudding And thudding and cold fear possessed me all, On the gray slopes there, where Winter in sullen brooding Hung between height and depth of the ugly fall Of Heaven to earth; and the thudding was illness own. But still a hope I kept that were we there going over I; in the line, I should not fail, but take recover From others courage, and not as coward be known. No flame we saw, the noise and the dread alone Was battle to us; men were enduring there such And such things, in wire tangled, to shatters blown. Courage kept, but ready to vanish at first touch. Fear, but just held. Poets were luckier once In the hot fray swallowed and some magnificence Ivor Gurney was born in Gloucester, England in 1890. He began composing music when he was 14 years old and attended the Royal College of Music on a scholarship. He wrote hundreds of poems and more than 300 songs. Gurney was rejected by the army for poor eyesight, but managed to convince the 2nd/5th Gloucesters to take him in 1917 despite the fact that he had already suffered a nervous breakdown and was probably already suffering from manic-depression. He served in France, where he was wounded twice, the second time by gas. After the war, Gurney returned to the Royal College of Music to study with Ralph Vaughn Williams, but his increasingly erratic behavior forced him to leave school. By 1922, his mental state had deteriorated to the point where he had to be institutionalized. He spent the rest of his life in institutions. In 1937, he died of tuberculosis in the City of London Mental Hospital. Jennifer Bohnhoff is a novelist who lives in the mountains of central New Mexico. A Blaze of Poppies, her novel set in New Mexico and France during the 1910s, is available for preorder on Amazon.