the soldier-poets still live! (the soldier poets still die)

On several occasions Vleeptron has recycled the powerful and bitter body of poems written by British soldiers from World War One, many of whom did not make it home to England or Scotland alive -- though by miracles of mud and confusion, their battered notebooks scrawled with their poems did.

I have wondered if this monstrous Iraq War has inspired its own soldier-poets.

And if not, why not? What has happened since 1914-1918 and 2007 to have boiled away the response of poetry from soldiers in a ghastly, grotesque battlefield?

Nothing. The poetry is still there, the soldier-poets are still here, ducking their heads, praying to come home in one piece. But making certain they will at least leave their poems, their echoes of Doomed Youth, behind.

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Curtis D. Bennett, of Lawrence, Kansas USA, was a military pilot and served as a captain in the Marines during the Vietnam War in 1968. Here is a newspaper essay he wrote about Memorial Day 2006. Here are two of his poems about the War in Iraq.

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Abu Ghraib

Curtis D. Bennett

The photos were painfully clear,
In color, and graphically detailed,
In multi-pixel format
From across the world.
From another faraway land
In another place, and time.
They were undeniable, uncompromising,
Painful to look at, hard to accept.

Some photos showed naked men
Wearing black hoods over their heads,
Clustered in a pile on the floor,
As an American girl grinned and pointed at their genitalia,
As if she found it somewhat lacking.
Manacled hands embracing each other
Bare skin on bare skins
In a mangled group of bodies
Lying together in a jangled, confusing heap.
They lay helpless before the Americans.

One showed a prisoner like a giant moth-man
Standing on boxes with electrodes,
Attached to his fingers.
Still another terrified man,
Backed away, handcuffed,
Cringing against the wall
In total terror as excited dogs,
Eagerly strained and barked for the prize.

Most disturbing in that sinister jail
Known in Iraq as Abu Ghraib
A smiling American soldier,
Looks down at a prisoner,
Laying on the ground like a dog,
She held a leash to his neck
She stood there stoically watching
Her captured prize of Iraqi manhood
Cowering on the cold cement.
Helpless, powerless to resist,
Unable to act, unable to move,
Unable to think, defenseless
Totally submissive and subservient,
Totally at the mercy of the war.
These photos are a metaphor,
Of what America considers Iraq,
What we think of the Iraqi people,
Of our dominance, or our authority,
Of our cruelty, and our brutality,
Our inhumanity and callousness,
With total disregard for other peoples
Except ourselves and our selfish priorities,
Where the Military abuse their power,
Where the strong abuse the weak,
Where Leaders are beyond the law,
Beyond authority, beyond reproach
To unfortunate prisoners of war,
They appear to believe
They are answerable to no one.

A parallel metaphor emerges,
Of guards and prisoners,
Of leashes and hoods
Of the calloused indifference
The brutal treatment to Prisoners of War.
It is Cheney holding the Leash
Of a feckless, hooded naked Congress,
Secretary Rumsfeld dragging the leash
Of the military stumbling blindly behind,

President Bush leads the trio
Down his yellow brick road,
Paved with lies and misrepresentations,
False Fear, terror, deceit,
And fanciful, imagined enemies,
Dragging behind him the hooded,
Unseeing naked American masses
Down his deadly road
Of war and destruction,
All of us, unwilling participants in his War,
All of us -- in America
Prisoners of War.

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Coming Home

Curtis D. Bennett

Inside the gray, steel womb of cargo space.
Flag covered caskets quietly lie
In rank and file, line on line in silence.
Bound together in final military formation
Flags of blood reds, cloud whites and ocean blues,
Drape and caress the dull, pewter boxes
Encasing the broken, ashen, hallowed remains
Of dead young boys and girls,
Forced to pay the ultimate price
In this foreign land with strange people,
Where brutal Death forever lurks,
Beneath the surface, around the corner
Watching with cold eyes that never sleep.

Outside, hot desert night winds
Sweep down from the northern mountains
In biting, stinging clouds of dust
Blowing and swirling the tarmac, ruffling flags.
Steel, hydraulic doors whine and close tight

Sealing the precious cargo inside.
Engines come to life and rumble the air,
The huge cargo transport trundles away
Disappearing in the darkness of the taxiway.
Moments later, re-emerging, a roaring shadow
That races and climbs sharply up and away
Into the night air to seek the stars.

Floating suspended between earth and sky
The westbound plane heads for the full moon.
Carrying its sleeping, youthful cargo home.
To the land that gave them birth,
To the parents who loved and raised then
To the government who sent them to fight,
And the politicians who killed them.
In the early morning hours, it touches down
On glistening tarmac of the sleeping base.
To taxi off and away towards the dark distant hanger
Where black hearses wait under tight security.

Once again hydraulics hum the cargo doors open.
The setting moon softly illuminates the caskets.
So quietly they lie, so well they sleep,
With no more promises to keep,
No more miles to go.

May 12, 2004

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Home Come Your Sons

David Roberts

(Brize Norton 28 March 2003)

On this misty spring day
at an airfield in Oxfordshire
ten hearses wait.

Families in formal lines, bandsmen,
commanders -- the services' top brass, chaplains,
the Duke of York, the Minister of Defence,
here to do their bit, wait
and watch the sky,
searching for a sign
of a returning plane.

Then suddenly with massive roar
the huge transporter touches down.

They wait again,
and how much longer must they wait this awful apparition?

At last
unseen forces lower the huge tail door.

This is the moment.
Home come your sons --
the first to die in this sad war.

One by one,
ten coffins draped in union flags
are carried shoulder high by six young men
walking at a solemn pace.

Fine words are spoken --
words of respect and consolation.
In turn each coffin is borne
to each waiting hearse
and the band plays Handel's mournful march.

You know they did their duty --
good-hearted, keen, they had so much to give.
Yet this is their reward. It makes no sense.
You shake with grief and utter loss.
You are filled with pride
and try to comprehend
the reasons your sons died who should have lived.

Regrettably, the public also has a right to ask,
was fighting in this war a necessary task?

Was it right
that your sons went to bomb and kill
people who bore us no ill?

They were a courageous band of brothers
who went abroad
to risk the lives of others.

It must take guts to drop those bombs
on defenceless people who had no chance.

Was it really necessary to attack
the innocent people of Iraq? --
Children, half of them,
and over half malnourished.
What had they done to us
to be so punished?

Your boys didn't have to maim and kill
or break the hearts of mothers.
This is the shamefullest of wars.
They could have used their talents in a decent cause.
They could have lived,
and you could see them still.

30 March and 6 April 2003.

Copyright © 2003 David Roberts
Free use on the internet/web and small-scale, not for profit publications.
Please acknowledge source.

Personal note

I feel the deepest sympathy for those parents, relations and friends of soldiers and victims killed and injured in war, in all their grief and pain. This year has seen calamitous and totally avoidable suffering in Iraq.

When young people sign up to serve in the armed forces of their country they do so in the belief that if the worst came to the worst they might be called upon to defend their country against an enemy invader. To find that they are called upon to attack another country is a abuse of their talents and courage.

I would hope that the loss of all the innocent lives would help in some way to make a better world, but I hold the conviction that attempting to "help" a country by first killing thousands of innocent people is an outrage, totally immoral, and illegal under international law. I believe leaders who initiate such crimes should be held personally responsible and tried as war criminals. They are the ones responsible for the deaths of the innocent and defenceless people of Iraq who never planned to do us the slightest harm, and the deaths of our own innocent servicemen who had no complaint against those whose country they were sent to help take over on behalf of America.

Several parents of soldiers killed in the Iraq war have contacted the British press to say how they felt that their sons died in a bad cause or were betrayed by the British government. Clearly, I agree with them.

On 10 November 2004 I watched Channel 4 news. It showed a group of parents of soldiers killed in Iraq laying a wreath on the step of 10 Downing Street. Afterwards there was a press conference. For several seconds the camera stayed on the face of one mother who cried uncontrollably. This to my mind is the essence of what is wrong with war. It causes such immense suffering which will take years if not generations to heal.

Another mother was interviewed outside the Houses of Parliament. She said that the war was wrong. There was no need for it. The Iraqis had never threatened Britain.

See my poem Remembrance Day 2004.