A Corner of a Foreign Field

by Fiona Waters

This anthology of war poetry combines the words of poets such as Wilfred Owen, Ivor Gurney and Robert Graves with around 200 newly restored photographs of the First World War drawn from the Daily Mail's archive. The poems include both those written by soldiers on the battlefield and those composed later, with the benefit of terrible hindsight; earlier works, such as The Shropshire Lad, which matched the mood of the nation at war; and poems by those left behind, the women.

Genres: Poetry, World War I, History, Nonfiction, Military History

188 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2007

About the author

iona Waters is renowned in the world of children’s books for her passion, enthusiasm, and encyclopedic knowledge of children’s literature. She has published more than eighty titles, including Sing a Song of Seasons, and her work has been translated into many different languages all over the world. Born and raised in Edinburgh, Fiona Waters now lives in the South of England with thousands of books and several very discerning cats.

Reviews

[Jim · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's hard to believe that this global conflict was in full swing 100 years ago, especially when I consider that I personally knew many men who had been combatants in one theatre or another. All gone now, of course, which is why an anthology of this type is essential to our understanding of the war. Fiona Waters has truly compiled a wonderful collection here, a compilation that includes a point of view from a cross-section of people affected by the war...and it affected everybody.

Within these pages you will find ample works by the more famous WWI poets like Wilfred Owen, who was killed one week before the end of the war, and whose mother received notice of his death as the armistice bells were ringing; Isaac Rosenberg, who was so short he served in a "bantam battalion" of men under the regulation height of 5'3" (who knew such battalions existed?)...Rosenberg, little battlecock that he was, also perished in combat in 1918. Siegfried Sassoon could not be left out, and of course Robert Graves is included...both of these men were fortunate to survive the war. These men were arguably the best-known WWI poets, and the book would not be complete without them.

Yet while Waters duly acknowledges the works of these great soldiers, her book is not overwhelmed by them, although Sassoon has about eight poems in here and Owen four or five. Other soldiers have a voice as well...John McCrae, perhaps Canada's best known WWI poet is in here as well. McCrae is known less for his volume of poetry than he is for the importance of his iconic In Flanders Fields. I cannot imagine a Canadian Remembrance Day service that did not include a recital of that famous poem. McCrae survived combat in both the Boer War and WWI only to perish of pneumonia in 1918. Also included is the tragic American Alan Seeger who eerily foretold his own death: ("I have a rendezvous with Death At some disputed barricade"). Seeger died while fighting as a member of the Foreign Legion. And the enemy is not forgotten...a poem by German soldier Wilhelm Klemm is included also...it seems the Germans didn't like the war any more than the soldiers of other nations.

The few examples listed above are just a sampling of the poems written by the soldiery, but Waters does not ignore the fact that others were affected by this conflict. Vera Brittain served as a nurse during the war and lost her fiancé and her only brother to enemy action. The opening line of her poem To My Brother (p.29) reveals her pain:

Your battle-wounds are scars upon my heart,

Rudyard Kipling, that great chronicler of barrack-room ballads, was excruciatingly brief in writing about the death of his son (p.76):

My son was killed while laughing at some jest. I would
I knew

What it was, and it might serve me in a time when jests
are few.

In fact, sadness abounds within these pages, and I will caution you: this @#$%^& book actually made me cry. More than once. And I am considered to be a bit of a hardass by some of my associates...so you have been warned. Grief and loss are prevailing themes, but you will find anger here too, mostly directed at the generals, like this from Harold Munro:

Graybeards plotted. They were sad.
Death was in their wrinkled eyes.
At their tables, with their maps
Plans and calculations, wise
They all seemed; for well they knew
how ungrudgingly Youth dies. (p.23)

Munro is echoed by Australian Nina Murdoch on page 26:

It is the old men with their crafty eyes
And greedy fingers and their feeble lungs,
Make mischief in the world and are called wise,
And bring war on us with their garrulous tongues.

It is the old men hid in secret rooms,
Feign wisdom while they sign our peace away,
And turn fair meadows into reeking tombs,
And passionate bridegrooms into bloodied clay.

It is the old men should be sent to fight!
The old men grown so wise they have forgot
The touch of mouth on mouth in the still night,
The tenderness that wedded lovers wot;

As grim as all this seems, some good came of the conflict. Women were coming into their own, stepping into jobs in munitions factories, hospitals, transit systems, and farms. For them, there could be no going back to their pre-war servitude. Their poetry abounds in here as well, best represented by Jessie Pope on P. 64:

Strong, sensible, and fit,
They're out to show their grit,
And tackle jobs with energy and knack.
No longer caged and penned up,
They're going to keep their end up
Till the khaki soldier boys come marching back.

I could go on quoting from this book all day, it is such a brilliant bit of work, and so nicely illustrated with period photographs portraying the war at home and on the battlefield. Anyone interested in WWI really should get a copy of this one. And a box of tissues.

remember, on your knees,
The men who guard your slumbers.

[Leslie · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful yet emotionally difficult book, this collection of World War I poetry is paired with photographs from the archives of the Daily Mail to achieve a masterpiece of historical immediacy.

All of my favorites are here—“In Flanders Fields”, “An Irish Airman Foresees His Death”, and “Dulce Et Decorum East”, as well as “Anthem for Doomed Youth” and various bits of “A Shropshire Lad”—as well as poems by Eleanor Farjeon and Carl Sandberg that had been previously unknown to me (shame on me) and, of course, Siegfried Sassoon. There are also many poems by non-poets, which frequently depict the home front and the mothers, wives, sisters, and sweethearts left behind.

But the real marvel here is the inclusion of the photographs; oh, my. You can read all the histories you’d like, and absorb the novels and poetry, but there is nothing like seeing photographs of people—mostly unknown—who existed and occupied a place on this earth…until they didn’t. Of course, many of the pictures are of men in the trenches and the battlefield; others depict people in the factories and hospitals. There are smiling boys here, but also boys whose haunted expressions offer a glimpse of the effects of the horrors of this war; these images in particular have stayed with me.

So, if you have been captivated by World War I–era poetry in the past—and I realize that praise for it may have been over-emphasized, making it nearly clichéd—this book is a revelation, bringing the poetry and the war itself even closer in time than you could imagine, one hundred years after its end.

[Sharon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Am doing a book challenge this year, and needed to read a poetry anthology for one of the categories. I have to admit I'm not really a poetry fan so was going to struggle with this one. Looking through the poetry section at the library, this book jumped out at me. I find World War I and II true accounts really interesting and as this was also illustrated I thought I would give it a try. The pictures are amazing and show all different aspects of the First World War. It was heartbreaking to see how so many of the pictures showed the soldiers looking happy and cheerful, smiling in every picture. How they could be looking so happy amongst all that death and destruction gives testament to what heroes they really were. The poems, again, showed all different aspects, from soldiers perspectives to the families left behind to the women who were doing the men's jobs back home. Some poems I knew or heard of, some were new to me. All of them brought tears to my eyes, made me feel emotional and humbled by the men and women who these poems were about.

[Andy Hickman · Rating 5 out of 5]

“A Corner Of A Foreign Field: The Poems Of World War One” by Fiona Waters

Gripping perspectives from those who were there!
[Spelling error on page 122 in the photo caption]
…
“Champs d’Honneur” BY ERNEST M. HEMINGWAY
Soldiers never do die well;
Crosses mark the places—
Wooden crosses where they fell,
Stuck above their faces.
Soldiers pitch and cough and twitch—
All the world roars red and black;
Soldiers smother in a ditch,
Choking through the whole attack.

….

“WARBRIDE”
There has been wrong done since the world began.
That young men should go out and die in war,
And lie face down in the dust for a brief span,
And be not good to look at anymore.

It is the old men with their crafty eyes
And greedy fingers and their feeble lungs,
Make mischief in the world and are called wise,
And bring war on us with their garrulous tongues.

It is the old men hid in secret rooms,
Feign wisdom while they sign our peace away,
And turn fair meadows into reeking tombs,
And passionate bridegrooms into bloodied clay.

It is the old men should be sent to fight!
The old men grown so wise they have forgot
The touch of mouth on mouth in the still of night,
The tenderness that wedded lovers wot;

The dreams that dwell in the eyes of a young bridge;
The secret beauty of things said and done;
The hope of children coming, and the pride
Of little homes and gardens in the sun.

It is the old men who have nought to lose,
And nought to pray for but their gasping breath,
Should bear this ill of the world, and so choose
Out of their beds to meet their master, Death.

This is the bitterest wrong the world wide,
That young men on the battlefield should rot,
And I be widowed who was scare a bride,
While prattling old men sit at ease and plot.
by Nina Murdoch

...
"Youth in Arms" by Harold Monro

HAPPY boy, happy boy,
David the immortal-willed,
Youth a thousand thousand times
Slain, but not once killed,
Swaggering again today 5
In the old contemptuous way;

Leaning backward from your thigh
Up against the tinselled bar—
Dust and ashes! is it you?
Laughing, boasting, there you are! 10
First we hardly recognized you
In your modern avatar.

Soldier, rifle, brown khaki—
Is your blood as happy so?
Where’s your sling or painted shield, 15
Helmet, pike or bow?
Well, you’re going to the wars—
That is all you need to know.

Graybeards plotted. They were sad.
Death was in their wrinkled eyes. 20
At their tables—with their maps,
Plans and calculations—wise
They all seemed; for well they knew
How ungrudgingly Youth dies.

At their green official baize 25
They debated all the night
Plans for your adventurous days
Which you followed with delight,
Youth in all your wanderings,
David of a thousand slings. 30

…

“Mental Cases” by Wilfred Owen

Who are these? Why sit they here in twilight?
Wherefore rock they, purgatorial shadows,
Drooping tongues from jaws that slob their relish,
Baring teeth that leer like skulls' tongues wicked?
Stroke on stroke of pain, — but what slow panic,
Gouged these chasms round their fretted sockets?
Ever from their hair and through their hand palms
Misery swelters. Surely we have perished
Sleeping, and walk hell; but who these hellish?
— These are men whose minds the Dead have ravished.
Memory fingers in their hair of murders,
Multitudinous murders they once witnessed.
Wading sloughs of flesh these helpless wander,
Treading blood from lungs that had loved laughter.
Always they must see these things and hear them,
Batter of guns and shatter of flying muscles,
Carnage incomparable and human squander
Rucked too thick for these men's extrication.
Therefore still their eyeballs shrink tormented
Back into their brains, because on their sense
Sunlight seems a bloodsmear; night comes blood-black;
Dawn breaks open like a wound that bleeds afresh
— Thus their heads wear this hilarious, hideous,
Awful falseness of set-smiling corpses.
— Thus their hands are plucking at each other;
Picking at the rope-knouts of their scourging;
Snatching after us who smote them, brother,
Pawing us who dealt them war and madness.

…
NOTES on Wilfred Owen's "Dulce et Decorum Est"
"Dulce et Decorum Est" is a poem Wilfred Owen wrote following his experiences fighting in the trenches in northern France during World War I.
"Here is a gas poem ... done yesterday," he wrote to his mother from the recovery hospital in Craiglockhart, Scotland, in 1917. He was 24 years old. A year later he was killed in action, just one week before the Armistice of 11 November 1918 was signed to signal the end of hostilities.
The poem was published posthumously in a 1920 book simply called Poems. Wilfred Owen's preface reads: "This book is not about heroes ... My subject is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity."
Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori, which is a line taken from the latin odes of the Roman poet Horace, means it is sweet and proper to die for one's country. In his poem, Wilfred Owen takes the opposite stance.
He is, in effect, saying that it is anything but sweet and proper to die for one's country in a hideous war that took the lives of over 17 million people.
....
“Dulce et Decorum Est” BY WILFRED OWEN
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!—An ecstasy of fumbling
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And 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.

In all my dreams before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, 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.
…

To The Warmongers

"I'm back again from hell
With loathsome thoughts to sell;
secrets of death to tell;
And horrors from the abyss.

Young faces bleared with blood
sucked down into the mud,
You shall hear things like this,
Till the tormented slain

Crawl round and once again,
With limbs that twist awry
Moan out their brutish pain,
As the fighters pass them by.

For you our battles shine
With triumph half-divine;
And the glory of the dead
Kindles in each proud eye.

But a curse is on my head,
That shall not be unsaid,
And the wounds in my heart are red,
For I have watched them die."

~Siegfried Sassoon
…

“The Deserter” by Gilbert Frankau
‘I’m sorry I done it, Major.’
We bandaged the livid face;
And led him out, ere the wan sun rose,
To die his death of ignorance.

The bolt-heads locked to the cartridges;
The rifles stead to rest,
As cold stock nestled at colder cheek
And foresight lined on the breast.

‘Fire’ called the Sergeant-Major.
The muzzles flamed as he spoke:
And the shameless soul of a nameless man
Went up in cordite-smoke.

- - -

[Linda · Rating 5 out of 5]

Poignant poetry and photographs that tug at your heart while showing the reality of the First World War. Poetry was much more prized as a literary talent at that time and expresses the fatality and wantonness of this war as nothing else I have read. The photos are all from the Daily Mail (a British paper) and run from soldiers standing knee deep in the water in their muddy trenches, smiling for the camera, to the human waste after the Battle of Flanders.

A MUST for those interested in WWI.

[Khetsia · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5/5: pretty good but wouldn’t necessarily recommend (even if one was interested in poetry and photographs from ww1, I feel like a google search would suffice)

Good points: inclusion of poems from women and of one poem from a foreign soldier (someone who’s home was colonized by the same people he was now risking his life for); allowed me to discover a new WW1 poet to look into (Siegfried Sassoon); the photographs allowed for an immersive experience (life in combat, in the trenches, life amongst women back “Home”)

Not so good points: was looking for more heart wrenching poems, the best poems included I was already familiar with (Wilfred Owen’s works), would have preferred very intimate looks at war rather than a bunch of poems saying in different words that “war is bad” (didn’t looove the approach Waters took when selecting the poems though in the end I am happy with the many gems I found!

[Winifred]

world war poetry brilliant poems

[Ted · Rating 4 out of 5]

Poignant poems accompanied by poignant photographs.

[Amanda · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very powerful collection of WWI poems and photographs Some of the poems, written by women, have an underlying sense of fury about them which moved me.

[Khetsia · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5/5: pretty good but wouldn’t necessarily recommend (even if one was interested in poetry and photographs from ww1, I feel like a google search would suffice)

Good points: inclusion of poems from women and of one poem from a foreign soldier (someone who’s home was colonized by the same people he was now risking his life for); allowed me to discover a new WW1 poet to look into (Siegfried Sassoon); the photographs allowed for an immersive experience (life in combat, in the trenches, life amongst women back “Home”)

Not so good points: was looking for more heart wrenching poems, the best poems included I was already familiar with (Wilfred Owen’s works), would have preferred very intimate looks at war rather than a bunch of poems saying in different words that “war is bad” (didn’t looove the approach Waters took when selecting the poems though in the end I am happy with the many gems I found!

[Ilze · Rating 3 out of 5]

Because of the mental state I'm in at the moment, it really wasn't difficult to make my way through this poetry in less than a week (remembering that I have a toddler in tow too). At school we all learnt about Wilfred Owen and Dulce et decorum est, but this book contains much more than that. There are two more poems by Owen, in addition to several others of the same calibre. A few poems have also been placed that were written by the women who were left at home to wait for their soldiers to return. The photography brings the message of the poems home poignantly, but I must add one negative point: Waters is clearly a British citizen as only pictures showing British soldiers in a good light and the German ones in a bad one have been placed. It would've been quite interesting to get a bit more of a balanced view. Good book nevertheless.

[Jeanne · Rating 4 out of 5]

A beautiful collection of poetry from the Great War in my opinion, the photographs throughout only adding to the poems themselves.

My favourite part was definitely the variety of poems that the collection gave. These did not only come from the soldiers (though their viewpoints were also varying from poem to poem) but from the women at home as well as the women on the front. There were poems in the collection translated from both Arabic and German as well if I remember correctly.

And it was these multiple viewpoints that made this collection even more beautiful in my mind, and definitely worth the read.

[Danielle Hircock · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful book of WWI poetry. It encompasses a wide variety of authors and allows insight into the experiences of both the soldiers and the women they left behind - mothers, wives, sweethearts.

Stirring photographs accompany each poem, so you make a clear link between the poem and the images it seeks to evoke.

Some classic ones, such as Dulce et decorum est and some less familiar ones, such as Break of day in the trenches, each tell their story and let the reader into the world of the soldier, little by little.

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a Great War enthusiast I find this collection indispensable, there are a good choice of poems to interest someone just starting out with WWI poetry, or a fan. The photographs help to get a better feel of the horror experienced by the authors.

[Marlene · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing photos illustrate this book, and the selection of poetry, though very sad in tone, is beautiful.

[Stewart · Rating 5 out of 5]

A splendidly illustrated collection of moving First World War poetry. exactly what I hope for in a book of war poetry.

[Donnell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars
The poetry is a mixture of the well known (Dulce et Decorum est) and less well known pieces. Some were written by soldiers (including a couple that were translated, one from Arabic, one from German) others by the women left behind.

The photographs are in their own way more moving than the poetry. Many show how the bombardment destroyed the landscape: trees are splintered stumps in a sea of mud and water-filled shell holes. For each picture showing troops smiling at the camera there is another showing soldiers struggling through mud, or charging 'over the top', with the grim reminder in others of how that may have ended for them - corpses lying in the mud.