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Sonnets from a prison camp

Chapter 2: FOREWORD
By Archibald Allan Bowman
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About This Book

A sequence of sonnets composed by a soldier in enemy captivity during the First World War, recording frontline violence, the suddenness of bombardment, marches and captures, the strain of waiting and the loss of comrades, and the solace found in memory and poetic labour. Many poems juxtapose immediate scenes—exploding shrapnel, crowded billets, marches, and internment camps—with reveries of homeland landscapes and classical or moral reflections. Sections move between field incidents, the nadir of imprisonment, thoughts of home and influences, and short epigrams or maxims, showing how verse acted as a mental bulwark against despair while exploring themes of fate, endurance, and the persistence of inner freedom.

FOREWORD

For allowing this slight volume to see the light of day I have but one excuse to offer. The situation to which these verses are the emotional reaction represents a very real and serious piece of experience. It is no mere poetical exaggeration to say that in the first days of captivity at least, the writing of the sonnets was a labour that “stood between my soul and madness,” and I cannot help feeling that what, under one of the heaviest blows that can befall a soldier, has meant so much to me, may have in it something that will raise it at times above the personal to the level of general human interest.

It ought to be a pleasure to acknowledge generosity in an enemy; and I wish to express my indebtedness to Captain Hohnholz, Commandant of the Prison-Camp at Hesepe, to whose kindness I owe it that I am able to offer the sonnets as they stand for publication.

Offizier—Gefangenenlager
Hesepe, 17th August 1918