Sonnets from a prison camp

Chapter 7: II

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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.

II

“Stand to!” The warning word was hardly said,

And had not moved a man, when round and round

Forthwith the steaming kettles came to ground,

And the men swarmed to dip their hasty bread,

A soldier’s morning bite. Still overhead

Murder flew hurtling, shell by shell, and found

Earth in some rearward purlieu, quenched in sound.

Breakfast began, but not a man was fed

Ere the growled “Fall in” menacingly proved

The dog’s bone kinsman to a soldier’s meal.

We mustered, lowering, hungry. The ranks grew;

And it was seen the world again had moved,

As at the impulse of a groaning wheel,

Unto some issue, from that first “Stand to!”

Rastatt, 27th April