War Erasure #5
JFK's favorite poet
Welcome to my War Erasure series. In this series, I perform Banksy-style stencils over pro-war material via erasure poetry. I am continuing with WWI poetry as the source material with this poem written in 1916.
In the book Muse of Fire, by Michael Korda, Korda recounts a story with journalist Edward Murrow and then Senator John F. Kennedy on October 30th, 1953:
At one point, Murrow asked Senator Kennedy if he had a favorite poem. Unhesitatingly, he answered that he often read Alan Seeger’s poems, and recited the first two lines of Seeger’s most famous [the poem above.]
I’ll summarize the excellent history of Seeger from Muse of Fire here. Seeger is born in New York and attends Harvard. His classmate is T. S. Elliot and they graduate in 1908. He hangs around with John Butler Yeats (father of W.B. Yeats) for a bit in NYC but becomes aimless and board so he moves to Paris in 1912.
While in Paris, he falls in love with Paris and all things French — as romantic Americans are apt to do. At the onset of the war, he joins the French Foreign Legion. The French Foreign Legion is an interesting military service which I won’t get into much here — I’ll let you enjoy the YouTube rabbit hole if you wish.
You don’t have to be French to join and you take an oath to the Legion itself, not to France. As answered on the current FAQ, you receive a new identity upon joining. However you must be French to be an officer, so Seeger enlists which is unlike the other WWI poets as well.
He is involved in heavy combat through 1916. Between combat, he wrote many articles for the New York Sun — arguing the case for America to enter the war to support France. Unlike most of the other WWI poets. He was in the thick of the trenches and he loved it:
Seeger describes Germans as the “valiant foe.” It is the civilians on his own side he hates. Despite pain, fear, and daily suffering, he was where he wanted to be: “Amid the clash of arms I was at peace.”
Despite his love for France, he died on America’s birthday, July 4th, 1916 in the Battle of the Somme by machine-gun fire. A friend described him: “His head was erect, and pride in his eyes, I saw him running forward, with bayonet fixed.”
Korda states (emphasis mine);
Alan Seeger would be the last of the soldier poets to write about the war in a spirit of enthusiasm. After him, the poet’s task would be to describe what no one wanted to imagine and to speak what no one wanted to hear.
Seeger received the glorious rendezvous with Death that he wished for. He found meaning and purpose by joining the French Foreign Legion, frustrated no doubt that his motherland dragged her feet on entering the war to aid an ally.
When I was in Afghanistan, I met some soldiers who had done three or four deployments. They told me the life in the desert was better than at home. Were they at peace amid the clash of arms, or just escaping normal life? I don’t know. I got the sense they didn’t enjoy their own children.
Meaning and purpose is exactly what Paul Kingsnorth argues, in Against the Machine, is lacking in our modern, Western civilization. If your opportunities are low, the U.S. military is more than willing to provide you meaning and purpose to escape your situation. It did for me.
Everyone leaves the military in uniform — either in a casket or by walking out the gate. The search for a purpose must begin again. It has taken me quite some time to be able to say:
Hush dear Death, spring rips again this year and I am true.
Going forward in this series, I also want to also discuss the music of WWI. Because everyone likes music and the tales of the war are not just written, they are sung.
Let’s start with the song Hanging On the Old Barbed Wire. Here is a classic WWI folk song sung by Chumbawamba. Yes, the same group that brought us Tubthumping brought us English Rebel Songs 1381-1984. Justin Patrick Moore may have told me this fact — but I’m still shocked to re-discover it.
In an article published by Veterans for Peace UK, it introduces this tune with:
Soldiers soon learnt to recognise the type of wounds that would ensure their evacuation from the horror of the front for good. To have a ‘Blighty one’ was regarded by many men as preferable to staying on in the trenches. Those that did stay on often became cynical, nihilistic and a little bit crazy. Hanging On The Old Barbed Wire, sung here by Chumbawamba, was written by soldiers in the trenches. Designed to be sung whilst marching, the song is one of many showing the ordinary soldier’s dissent and disgust at the war and also at the inequalities within the army system.
If you want to find the private
I know where he is
I know where he is
I know where he is
If you want to find the private
I know where he is
He’s hanging on the old barbed wire
I saw him, I saw him
Hanging on the old barbed wire
Hanging on the old barbed wire
You can pre-order my first collection of poems, Wasted Blood, here.
The counter of life against death... perfect here!
This is my introduction to, and the very first sample I've seen of your War Erasure series. I'm baffled and shocked, with this technique, that you could get so much, so many characters out of the original piece. Once again, fresh man! The addition of some of the history is nice too.
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
John McCrae