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4. Accurs'd They Were Not Here

Goulding, who was wounded at Courcelette, captured the enduring bond between the fallen and the survivors in this poem, first published in the British Columbia veterans' journal The Gold Stripe. 1

"The unbroken line"
New Year's Eve, 1916

Gregory fell beside the Marne,
And John where flows the Aisne;
But here to-night, ere midnight chime,
We three shall meet again.

Though land and sea lie wide between,
Their ghosts this way shall win,
For, three true men, we made a bond
To watch the New Year in.

We made it on a Flanders Field
Where white the shell-smoke ran;
And who is Death to break the faith
That man has pledged to man?

Then draw the chairs beside the fire
And brim their cups with wine;
For ere the bells of midnight swing
Their hands shall clasp with mine.

Though Gregory lies where Marne runs down,
And John beside the Aisne,
Living and dead, ere midnight chime,
We three shall meet again. 2

One of the most dominant themes in the veteran experience is the belief that ex-soldiers and their dead comrades were forever bound together in a unique brotherhood. Comradeship was not something that could be dissolved by death; the ties between comrades persisted through death, and the survivors and the dead often communed together. This belief should be viewed in the context of the deep interest in occultism which pervaded the 1920s, and also as ex-soldiers' interpretation of the immortality of the soul which was so central to the spiritual interpretation of the war.

Armistice Day was the most significant occasion when the spirits of the dead returned to stand with their comrades. Significantly, the dead were invisible to everyone save their comrades. In Kim Beattie's poem 'The Vision,' for example, only the veterans are aware that the dead have marched in the Armistice day procession.

A sacred, sudden silence drops
On this November noon;
On hundred streets, on thousand shops,
In million hearts attune;
A City, in remembrance, stops;
The rigid hosts commune.
Now as they bless the sacrifice,
A vision swift unfolds
Before stern men's unseeing eyes
While yet the silence holds.
Vivid the Past, the Present dies;
Gone comrades each beholds.

None else may see yon column dawn
From womb of cloven sky,
Heads high, come pressing on and on,
As silent seconds fly;
Heads high, come pressing on and on,
The Empire dead draw nigh;

Now far, now near, a vision fleet,
The men of Empire-boast;
From out the distance-narrowed street,
And least is as the most,

Yet, as of old, with cadent beat,
With each to his old post.

The silence breaks! And Life's ado
For minutes two doth strive;
The World knows not the dead went thro'
To rouse and to revive
And steel the steel-stern bond anew
With them that did survive. 3

Similar in tone, but with typically stronger religious symbolism, is Frederick George Scott's 'The Unbroken Line':

We who have trod the borderlands of death
Where courage high walks hand in hand with fear,
Shall we not hearken what the spirit saith,
'All ye were brothers there, be brothers here'?
Who who have struggled through the baffling night
Where men were men and every man divine,
While round us brave hearts perished for the right,
By chaliced shell-holes stained with life's rich wine.

Let us not lose the exalted love which came
From comradeship with danger and the joy
Of strong souls kindled into living flame
By one supreme desire, one high employ.

Let us draw closer in these narrower years,
Before us still the eternal visions spread;
We, who outmastered death and all its fears,
Are one great army still - living and dead. 4

The poem, written as a dedicatory verse to Scott's The Great War as I Saw It, has an interesting use of religious imagery. The 'chaliced shell-holes' and 'life's rich wine' in the second stanza suggest that battle was a sacrament that cleansed man of sin. Only those who have taken the sacrament of battle can stand in the unbroken line.

Suggestions for further reading

Veterans:
• Margaret H. Darrow, 'French Volunteer Nursing and the Myth of War Experience in World War I,' American Historical Review 101, no. 1 (Feb. 1996): 80-106.
• Kent Fedorowich, '"Society pets and morning coated farmers": Australian Soldier Settlement and the Participation of British Ex-Servicemen,' War & Society 8 (1990): 38-56.
• Desmond Morton, "'Kicking and Complaining': Demobilization Riots in the Canadian Expeditionary Force, 1918-19,' Canadian Historical Review 61 (1980): 334-60.
• Desmond Morton and Glenn Wright, 'The Bonus Campaign, 1919-21: Veterans and the Campaign for Re-Establishment,' Canadian Historical Review 64 (1983): 147-67.
• Bobbie Oliver, '"The Diggers' Association": A Turning Point in the History of the Western Australian Returned Services League,' Journal of the Australian War Memorial 23 (1993).
• William Pencak, For God and Country: The American Legion, 1919-1941 (Boston: Northeastern University Press 1989).
• J.A. Schultz, 'Finding Homes Fit for Heroes: The Great War and Empire Settlement,' Canadian Journal of History 18, no. 1 (1983): 99-110.
• Stephen R. Ward, The War Generation: Veterans of the First World War (London: Kennikat Press 1975).
• Stephen R. Ward, 'The British Veterans' Ticket of 1918,' Journal of British Studies 8 (1968): 155-69.

Comradeship and Masculinity:
• Michael C.C. Adams, The Great Adventure: Male Desire and the Coming of World War I (Bloomington: Indiana University Press 1990).
• J.A. Mangan and James Walvin, Manliness and Morality: Middle-Class Masculinity in Britain and America, 1800-1940 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1987).
• Carman Miller, 'Chums in Arms: Comradeship Among Canada's South African War Soldiers,' Histoire sociale/Social History 13, no. 36 (1985): 359-73.
• Peter N. Stearns, Be A Man!: Males in Modern Society (New York: Holmes & Meier 1979)

Footnotes
1. Acadia University Archives: J.D. Logan Papers, bpx 8, file E.R. Goulding Poems.
2. Norah Holland, Spun-Yarn and Spindrift (Toronto: J.M. Dent 1918), 90.
3. Kim Beattie, 'And You!' (Toronto: Macmillan 1929), 90.
4. Frederick George Scott, Collected Poems (Vancouver: Clarke and Stuart 1934), 75.