KITCHENER’S MOB

Anguish is this elderly veteran’s war souvenir

When the mood is alone, and he struggles to fall asleep

Threatening remembrances troll his subconscious, equipped to reappear

Recollections become nightmares of soldiers treading across a minefield like sheep

And a boy, barely a young man, experiences in uniform the inconceivable dread of fear

Apologizing for each misstep that he killed friends, whose names are his forever to keep.

Unsympathetic are the years that pass, marbled with a soldier’s quota of condemnation

Despite longstanding confession, the nightmares persist, tirelessly articulated all the more

The nightmares began after I was discharged, and believed I was borderline mad with disfunction

‘There but for the grace of God go I,’ guilty for having fought in and survived The Great War.

The Great War

Damn, the Great War.

A ghastly winter prowls outdoors, as the night’s frigid temperature drops another degree

Inside a veteran’s home sitting room, on a beechwood night table stained with water rings

A candle set in a taper-handled pewter holder provides a light for what he chooses to see

Its lively flame reigns over his small room by reshaping the appearance of familiar things.

Ghostly shadows wearing foreign shapes execute maneuvers on a grey field of plaster wall

A retired British Expeditionary Force soldier, he answers to the sketch of a frayed body

Hallucinations besiege his waning days like a gang of hoodlums lying in wait for nightfall.

Fidgeting in his caned seat perturbed by minor obsessions, his mind coughs stale air

He complains of asthma, so he pulls close a Scottish wool blanket across his tapered lap

A similar weave he recalls, to his old army issue that provided him unfailing care

His soldier AB64 paybook, with its dog-eared cover and accountings of times long past

Is preserved along with a small white feather inside a tin he keeps by the seat of his companion wheelchair.

Jubilation to fight an enemy! he exclaims from his sitting room, furnished neatly with history

Mixed with faux rosewood furniture, doilies mother made, and a codger’s forlorn thought

Britain was goin’ to war, he alone recalls, with a clarity that borders on the exemplary

In the days when his time is expiring, and calls for his opinion are rarely sought

A pair of old soldier’s eyes see the quiet interrupted by quarantined memory.

Back then we called ourselves Kitchener’s Mob; back then we were known as a tough lot

Hip hip hooray. We’re off to fight the Hun, and bloody well have our way with them onto victory.

Cheers! I shouted to the boys of Sir John’s tavern. Cheers to your ladies too.

The ladies, God bless them, will wait, I add with a wink. Britain needs us now instead

Making the rounds is a war across the Channel that needs to be won!

Lord Kitchener says he needs fightin’ men! I bellow with the fervor of a newlywed

Just then a wanker seated on a stool shouts, you may feel giddy now, talking like war is fun

But have you given any thought to the notion of finding yourself shot, and then waking up dead?

Dismissing the old wanker, I add: In a pinch, when tossed an unpleasant task, I’m your man!

Knowing full well that the Daily Mirror reported a swift end to the Kaiser’s plan

Never to hang back, I am!

I remember bragging. I could brag as well as any self-respecting braggart can.

O’ how confident I was, about the prospects of getting a lead on those low-spirited types.

My God, I was a fecking eejit back then

Mostly pride I suppose and a tad bit of folly

The same measure of arrogance common among many untested young men

Who view military service as a means and an opportunity

Nary thought about the possibility some bloke might bring my life to a premature end.

With my chest puffed like a thickset Starling, I enlisted in the army before conscripted

Still, keen on treading off to war, chatting up invincibility, and believing what the news reported.

My poor Mum. She insisted my thinking was daft, arguing that war is criminally vile

It worried her sick she said, that the war would return her son was no guarantee

Every third day, she’d light a candle at St. Peters Church, praying for me to postpone going to war for a while

I understand how you feel I kindly tell her. I’m going because it is my duty.

Toting an old cane suitcase off to war, I leave before breakfast and just after dawn.

Sixteen months later I pencil in a letter home: Write to me Mum before you retire to bed

Don’t forget, I like it when you tell me about how you’re feeling, knowing that I’m gone

Now you keep cheerful Mum. I remember your prayers and what else you said

Do remember me kindly to my friends. Tell them things here are fine, and that I’m getting on.

Your letters are a blessing I carry in my tunic pockets before the shooting and over the top I run

Privately I’d brood about getting a mortal wound, and there’d be no one here to mourn.

The Army’s General Order, “To hell with casualties. This is our strategy however old”

They tell the men with no remorse, knowing that a soldier does what he is told.

In the veteran's home by the fireplace, a grey whiskery grin hoists across my conscience

I remember a few of my mates and in particular their nickname

Decent fellows. Pals I viewed mostly as blessed with gentlemanlike looks and promise

Burgie, Archie, Chesism, and I can’t forget the footballer in the group, Maggs

Then there was Thomas from Sussex, poor slight, and bespectacled Thomas

Called by the captain to be a runner he was.

Had a dirty time of it right off, including up until he disappeared

A mortar shell exploded near him, barely minutes on the job

With bated breath, we waited. After a thick cloud of ashen dirt and black iron cleared

Providence tallied another, the latest to be pinched from Kitchener’s Mob.

My eyes fatigue staring at the fireplace, which disengages the brain to drift and amble

Recalled is an event soon after I sewed on corporal stripes, one my mind wishes to unpack

0728, the men are at stand-to, huddled mostly in line anxiously at the trench parapet

I observe Fritz’s remote trench and the sun reflecting off steel bayonets inviting our attack

Already in a flap about machine gun fire and shelling that subjugates my waking thought

I’m ordered to shoot any of our soldiers in the fire trench who gets cold feet and holds himself back.

Yells from the German trenches taunt us. Their cheers tie my stomach in a Gordian knot

The goading is so raucous, that I compare it to a bevy of drunks attending a football game

We charge directly at gunfire from rows of trenches between no man’s land and Camelot

For God and King, I witnessed firsthand the tolerance that men have to kill and to maim.

Fix bayonets. A simple mindless action, just as I was taught

Yes, sergeant. What was it like? Were you scared of going over the top? How’d you maintain?

Kill him! A man with whom I am personally unfamiliar, yet in my rifle sight he is caught

Set aside soldier all that you believe is fair, admit this is war, and war triggers behaviour in men that would normally be judged insane.

Bombardments attack from afar, combined with strafing bursts from mortar fire

God willing one of these blasted shells doesn’t carry my number plate, and strikes too near

Or perchance I’m fallen by a goodnight kiss delivered by a well-positioned German sniper

O’ how my brain hemorrhages with possibilities when heartened by a fortnight of fear.

Enemy airships harass, threatening death when dropping their bombs from overhead

I tuck into my dugout to outlast the explosions and then praise God in review

Little rest and less sleep are standard as I pray for the next day, and not wake up dead.

All the while, the Seargent orders we devoice the wounded men who moan while poised helplessly tangled in barbwire, mere yards away.

The army boosts morale by doling the lads an occasional cup of tea and a ration of rum

Mail call is how to lift the spirit of most soldiers. Read those letters aloud, the homesick insist

We don’t rightly care to whom the letters are written, or frankly who they are from

I fancy receiving a parcel that includes a razor, peppermints, or anything edible and moist

It still amazes me how wounded memories accompany military service, each as endearing a prick as they come.

Nerve-wracked senses take their turn boasting intolerance for people, noise, and stench

So, I’m assigned to a working party cleaning latrines knee-deep in muck from rainstorms

Beyond most enemy range, I return to decent spirits keen on occupying the support trench

Where rifles and bullets are replaced by picks and shovels for the burial of faceless uniforms.

I survived the war with a Silver War Badge to show, and 52 shillings and sixpence in pay

Awarded upon my medical discharge for honourable military service

Drank away the money but wore the badge nearly every day

Looked for the badge on the lapel of other blokes, as if my search had a laudable purpose.

After discharge in 1916, my interests settled on the simple; I wanted to take what would be

I’d be known in town as a civilian if I had my druthers, and not a Tommy or a footslogger

Footing it to my job one damp morning, minding my affairs, a canary approached me

Without so much as a peep, she reached out and handed me a pocket-size white feather.

Being a sport about it, I viewed the encounter as a pretty girl giving me something for free

Only later did I discover the feather’s meaning, still I kept it all these years as a testament

A souvenir of a time in my life that might’ve been different, had I heeded my Mum’s plea

And not some stranger’s brilliant idea, that led me to decide on military enlistment

May I trouble you for a second cup of tea?

My brain need only blink these days, and the memory of wartime service is revived

Images burst like flashbulbs behind my eyes, ranging from the upsetting to the splendid

And a somber voice, indistinct yet familiar, emerges to enquire why I survived.

It queries about the Pals I cheered to enlist with me, and where was I when they died

Again, the nightmare, and again my mates are exhumed, Thomas, Maggs, and Archie

Their faces materialize and stare cheerlessly at me. I shudder until I blubber inside

Why them and not me?

Why did these mates die young men, and I survived?

I grapple with the repetitiveness, and how many times I must offer them an apology.

©2018 Bill Canepa