Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Trench Ballads and Other Verses
    Trench Ballads and Other Verses
    Trench Ballads and Other Verses
    Ebook148 pages1 hour

    Trench Ballads and Other Verses

    By Erwin Clarkson Garrett

    ()

    Read preview
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArchive Classics
    Release dateNov 25, 2013
    Trench Ballads and Other Verses

    Read more from Erwin Clarkson Garrett

    Related to Trench Ballads and Other Verses

    Related ebooks

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Tessa Castro

      Jul 26, 2023

      IN COMPETITION No 295 you were invited to write a poem called Roots. Cherry MacGregor started off in medias res: ‘Has the vine died? My husband had asked,/ As we enjoyed lunch in the garden.’ Another excellent opening came from DM Davis: ‘Roots, oh m

      2 min read

    • Article

      Hoard Almighty

      Jun 22, 2023

      Hoard Almighty
      2 min read

    • Article

      Commonplace Book

      Dec 1, 2021

      The light from the full moon lent a silky, glacial sheen to the towering front of the cloud, which stretched off to the horizon in both directions. I stood transfixed as it made its way down the street toward me at a little over the town’s speed limi

      3 min read

    • Article

      Meet Your New Favorite Poet

      Feb 20, 2019

      Meet Your New Favorite Poet
      6 min read

    • Article

      Commonplace Book

      Sep 1, 2021

      If any question why we died, Tell them, because our fathers lied. —Rudyard Kipling, “Epitaphs of the War,” The Years Between, 1919 She consulted me, a glance, and said: “I think not anything off the wagon. It arrives too quickly. Let’s have somethi

      4 min read

    • Article

      Commonplace Book

      Sep 3, 2019

      And that is why I do not like the news, because there has never been an era when so many things were going so right for so many of the wrong persons. —Ogden Nash, “Everybody Tells Me Everything,” The Face Is Familiar, 1941 Someone goes by wearing a

      3 min read

    • Article

      Five Poems

      May 1, 2020

      How on the Kama River the eye grows dark,when the cities stand on oaken knees. Disguising itself in a web, beard to beard,the burning pine grove runs, younger in the water. The water resisted one hundred and four oars,bearing them up and down to Kaza

      3 min read

    • Article

      Terror From The Skies

      Oct 6, 2022

      Terror From The Skies
      4 min read

    • Article

      Hook, Line And Sinker

      Oct 18, 2018

      Hook, Line And Sinker
      4 min read

    • Article

      In The Ruins Of Paradise

      Dec 17, 2018

      In The Ruins Of Paradise
      18 min read

    • Article

      Commonplace Book

      Jun 4, 2018

      I like long walks, especially when they are taken by people who annoy me. —Fred Allen I have always wondered, in reading travels, at the childish joy travellers felt at meeting people they knew, and their sense of loneliness when they did not, in

      4 min read

    • Article

      The Two Argonnes

      Feb 23, 2018

      The Two Argonnes
      24 min read

    • Article

      Two Poems by Joseph Brodsky

      May 12, 2020

      Two Poems by Joseph Brodsky
      7 min read

    • Article

      Tunes Of Glory

      Nov 26, 2020

      I NEVER HAD to have an opinion about the Falklands War because it was all over before I was ten months old, and however annoyingly precocious I was as a child, even I drew the line at articulating foreign policy in shrieks and burping. (Anyone tempte

      3 min read

    • Article

      Reader's Letter

      May 31, 2023

      SIR: I was astonished to read (Spring issue) that Hunter Davies believes he may be the only person left in the UK who has milk delivered in glass bottles every morning. Oop ’ere in t’north, we have milk delivered in this way. We also have Ringtons Te

      6 min read

    • Article

      Commonplace Book

      Dec 1, 2022

      Nothing is as important to our ability to survive as our ability to hurt. -Haider Warraich, The Song of Our Scars, 2022 In seed time learn, in harvest teach, in winter enjoy. Drive your cart and your plow over the bones of the dead. -William Blake, T

      4 min read

    • Article

      Looking The Part

      Jun 9, 2023

      Looking The Part
      3 min read

    • Article

      Tessa Castro

      Mar 9, 2022

      IN COMPETITION No 277 you were invited to write a poem called Morning Sounds. The entries were vivid: half domestic, half outdoor. Tim Lloyd observed that ‘A bin lorry approaching in reverse/Sounds like an asthmatic seal.’ Liz Piper remembered, durin

      2 min read

    • Article

      Memoirs Of A Fox

      Jan 1, 2019

      My year of graduate work in Cambridge, England was a somewhat bleak and desperate affair, coinciding with a bout of depression that could perhaps have been shortened or ameliorated if I had been assigned hard agricultural labor, a daily column of loc

      14 min read

    • Article

      Commonplace Book

      Jun 1, 2022

      Try to praise the mutilated world. Remember June’s long days, and wild strawberries, drops of rosé wine. The nettles that methodically overgrow the abandoned homesteads of exiles. —Adam Zagajewski, “Try to Praise the Mutilated World,” tr. by Clare C

      4 min read

    • Article

      Tessa Castro

      May 4, 2022

      IN COMPETITION No 279 you were invited to write a poem called Broken Bottle. Basil Ransome-Davies portrayed himself as ‘The man who dropped his wine in Marks’, by Bateman. Mike Morrison’s narrator found that the wind had knocked from the shelf ‘A nov

      2 min read

    • Article

      Time And Place

      Jan 5, 2023

      Time And Place
      4 min read

    • Article

      A Watery Graveyard Revisited

      Apr 27, 2023

      A Watery Graveyard Revisited
      2 min read

    Reviews for Trench Ballads and Other Verses

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Trench Ballads and Other Verses - Erwin Clarkson Garrett

      The Project Gutenberg EBook of Trench Ballads and Other Verses, by

      Erwin Clarkson Garrett

      This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with

      almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or

      re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included

      with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

      Title: Trench Ballads and Other Verses

      Author: Erwin Clarkson Garrett

      Release Date: July 31, 2012 [EBook #40379]

      Language: English

      *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TRENCH BALLADS AND OTHER VERSES ***

      Produced by Michael McDermott, from scans obtained at the

      Internet Archive

      Trench Ballads and Other Verses

      Erwin Clarkson Garrett

      Trench Ballads and Other Verses

      Portrait of Erwin Clarkson Garrett

      Trench Ballads

      and Other Verses

      By

      Erwin Clarkson Garrett

      Author of Army Ballads and Other Verses

      PHILADELPHIA

      THE JOHN C. WINSTON COMPANY

      1919

      Copyright, 1919,

      by The John C. Winston Co.

      THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO THE MEMORY OF

      MY FATHER,

      the late Captain George L. Garrett, of the Union

      Army, during the Civil War

      AND TO

      MY MOTHER,

      whose lifelong devotion, unselfishness, tenderness

      and loyalty to me, as to all her family and

      friends, make this dedication a pleasure

      and a joy only commensurate

      with my thought of her.

      PREFACE

      I have divided this book into three distinct parts. Part I, Trench Ballads, consists of forty American soldier poems of America’s participation in the World War, 1917-19, based entirely on actual facts and incidents, and almost exclusively on my own personal experiences and observations, when a private in Company G, 16th Infantry, First Division, of the American Expeditionary Forces in France. Part II, Pre-war Poems, consists of three sets of verses written just before the active entry of America in the war, and appertaining to, but not an integral part of, it, and therefore grouped separately. Part III, Other Poems, contains those of a general and non-military character.

      It is highly desirable the Notes at the end of this volume should be consulted, and that it be realized that with few exceptions, all these Trench Ballads were written in France, many scribbled on odd pieces of paper or on old envelopes in the trenches themselves, and consequently, when present locality is intimated, it is always France, that is to say, from the standpoint that I am speaking in and from the seat of operations. For example, when I use the term over here, it really means what the people at home in America would call over there. Hyperbole or little characteristic anecdotes that really never occurred, except in the brain of an author, I have absolutely shunned, and have endeavored to adhere strictly to the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, and to set forth the vicissitudes; the dangers, joys and tribulations of the army man, and especially the man in the ranks, and more especially the man in the ranks of the Infantry, as these latter formed the actual front-line or combat troops that bore the brunt in this greatest of all wars.

      Absolute continuity or sequence would seem superfluous, but it will be observed that I have endeavored to maintain it to a certain extent, i.e., by gradually leading from a number of military verses, without any strict inter-relation, to the day of being wounded, then on to several poems concerning the military hospital, and finally bringing the Trench Ballads to a close with those having to do with the returning home of the soldier.

      My previous book, Army Ballads and Other Verses, is the result of my experiences when serving as a private in Companies L and G, 23rd Infantry and Troop I, 5th Cavalry (Regulars), during the Philippine Insurrection of 1899-1902, and if Army Ballads and Other Verses is taken in conjunction with this volume, it is my hope together they may prove a fairly comprehensive anthology of the American soldier of recent times.

      E. C. G.

      Philadelphia,

      November 1st, 1919.

      CONTENTS

      PART I—TRENCH BALLADS

      Trenches

      Barb-Wire Posts

      Feet

      Your Gas-Mask

      Slum and Beef Stew

      Shell-Fire

      Mr. Fly

      The Salvation Army with the A. E. F.

      Shell-Holes

      Food

      Over the Top

      The Battle Mother

      Song of the Volunteers of 1917

      O. D.

      Artillery Registering

      Reciprocity

      Trucks

      Mademoiselle

      The First Division

      Little Gold Chevrons on My Cuffs

      A Trip-Wire

      The Favorite Song

      Captain Blankburg

      Little War Mothers

      Interrupted Chow

      S. O. S.

      The Gas-Proof Mule

      Infantry of the World War

      The Flowers of France

      A First-Class Private

      Birds of Battle

      Only for You

      Cooties

      Old Fusee

      The Colors of Blighty

      When Nurse Comes in

      Charlie Chaplin in Blighty

      Two Worlds

      Embarkation Home

      The Statue of Liberty

      PART II—PRE-WAR POEMS

      To France—1917

      The Pacifist

      Battle Hymn of ’17

      PART III—OTHER VERSES

      My Sapphire

      The Twins

      On Sending My Book to an English Friend

      Immortal Keats

      To a Little Girl

      God

      The Golden Day

      Notes

      MY COMRADES IN THE RANKS.

      You chose no easy Service,

          No safe job, friends of mine,

      But the mud of the shell-torn, trenches

          And the foremost battle-line.

      No camouflage patriotism—

          Though you had from a wealth to choose

      But the wicked work of No Man’s Land,

          Filling a man’s-size shoes.

      You didn’t say you wouldn’t play

          If you got no shoulder bars—

      You even placed your Country

          Above a general’s stars:

      For shocking, very shocking,

          You didn’t give a damn

      About your social status,

          When you fought for Uncle Sam.

      Friends of mine, friends of mine,

          I’ve shared your toil and tears—

      Your dangers and your little woes,

          When days were turned to

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1