War Poetry & Verse (Part-1)

The Soldier-Poet 

In every life,
there comes a time
to walk in shadows and in sunlight,
to hear silence and song,
to shed tears of sadness and of joy,
to forget what has been taken,
and remember
what has been given. 

Author Unknown

War Poetry & Verse (Part-2) 

The following story is from the December 1969 ARMY DIGEST 

The Soldier and His Poetry

by: SP5 Richard Dey

The soldier-poet is something of a phenomenon, not only among soldiers but in the history of poets as well. There is none like him, and with his verse, he makes his own anthologies. With no real knowledge of or interest in poetry, he is a man who sings for a brief time and then no more. He never wrote a poem before his war and chances are he'll never write one after it. Whether his silence comes from domestic content or a last firefight, we do not know. He is the type of man who would have remained silent -- except that the overwhelming circumstances of unusual times compelled him to speak.

On Buna and other South Pacific islands during World War II, they said that when a GI started composing verses he'd been in the jungle too long. No doubt this was a derisive comment but, in many instances, true.

Today, in Vietnam, a GI writing verse after patrolling through jungles, highlands and rice paddies probably hears the same thing said about himself. Yet, he is writing to understand something, to grasp an elusive meaning that sits in his mind like a mirage in the stifling air. Perhaps he tries a little harder than his buddies, because he reaches for that understanding by laboring to express his half-formed thoughts with the written word and, more than that, to mold them into the difficult form known as a poem.

To the trooper fighting, war is a statement, usually declarative; he hears it as an order. And for the soldier-poet, it becomes one long and often unanswerable question -- in spite of his loyalties or ideological beliefs. He's there, in a torn country thousands of miles from home, with War or maybe it's Death or Loneliness or Love or Hope doing the interrogating, racking his mind. He may or may not find any answers, but the verse he pens at least attenuates those questions and conflicts tormenting him.

The soldier-poet is the common man. Give or take a year or two, he has a high school level education. In previous wars, he was the doughboy and the dogface; today he is the grunt. It is the fact that the man is a soldier that makes him a poet. The soldier-poet is precisely what his compound name implies; his soldiering and poetry are inseparable. The intense experience of war brings forth the poetry. It stimulates the necessary energy to write and it provides the material that make the themes with which he concerns himself.

Under the stress of combat, he comes of age emotionally and spiritually. His thoughts and feelings become more acute, more definite. If he struggled with problems of identity before entering the Army, he soon finds one after he's in, for soldiering and writing poetry demand a fairly intense sense of self.

In circumstances that threaten him, as school, sports or a job back home never could, the soldier-poet finds himself faced with conditions which he often cannot account for or easily reconcile as part of the human experience. While there's still time, while his passions blister with the chaos of war that surrounds him, he writes -- in a letter to his mother, his wife or girl, on any piece of paper he happens to find. Often, his buddies find that same piece of paper in his pocket after he is dead.

Some of America's finest poets have served the military, from Walt Whitman as a medic in the Civil War to James Dickey as a combat pilot in World War II. Though war played a part in the firing of their imaginations, America at

War Poetry & Verse (Part-3)

Freedom. . .
Is the soldier's cry.
We cherish it, we live it,
And for it ... would willingly die. Freedom. . .
Is the soldier's cry.
We cherish it, we live it,
And for it ... would willingly die. Freedom. . .
Is the soldier's cry.
We cherish it, we live it,
And for it ... would willingly die. Freedom. . .
Is the soldier's cry.
We cherish it, we live it,
And for it ... would willingly die. 

The controversy over Vietnam and the protesters, people often the same age as the young soldier, arouse great resentment among those who do the fighting and the dying. While contrary attitudes on the home front have always aggravated those at war, the present conflict has stirred many of the soldier-poets to write poems in protest of the protesters. "Living And Dying," one of the most remarkable poems to come out of the Vietnam War, is bitter and written by an enraged man. It begins: 

Take a man, then put him alone.
Put him 12,000 miles from home.
Empty his heart of all but blood.
Make him live in sweat and mud.

The poet speaks of the "Peace Boys" protesting, taking drugs, burning draft cards and then asks, "Am I supposed to die for you?" The question, filled with resentment, generates this testament:

I'll hate you to the day I die.
You made me hear my buddy cry.
I saw his arm, a bloody shred.
I heard them say, "This one is dead. .
He had the guts to fight and die;
He paid the price-But what'd he buy?
But who gives a damn what a soldier gives?

This poem, a brimming heart "empty of all but blood," is not a political poem asking for concurrence of views. Soldier-poets don't have the time for debate: they're fighting a war. At no point in the poem does the poet state his views. His song is a cry for support, a cry to his fellow man for compassion for the men dying regardless of why.

Certainly, no sane man likes war nor wants any part of its horror. But to the soldier who finds himself in war, there is a job to perform-a mission to complete.

Rid this country now of hostile force,
And the world will be on the right course.
So push away your feelings, do your job this year;
If for nothing else, so your son doesn't come here.

The conditions of war suggest lessons to the soldier-poet, make him more appreciative and compassionate.

When I return to those I love
Let me be a little kinder.
For life's too short to be otherwise
And let this war be my reminder.

The soldier-poet is not always the infantryman or combat arms specialist. Truck drivers, men in basic training, cooks, clerks and mechanics write verse. Nor do all the soldier-poems deal with love, fear, glory, honor, patriotism, challenge, despair, pity or any of the other serious themes that war suggests. Men write of their rifle, "Overnight we inherited our third arm," their platoon or company, R&R, beer, mail, their tanks and trucks:

She is made of steel
And cannot talk
But she must have had some feeling
For she never made me walk.

Many of the poems spring not from passion but from boredom, and many of the more personal poems impress one as being the result of boredom's introspection. Some are written simply for amusement or to recount a humorous incident. Others seem like glorified letters and are addressed specifically to a wife, a son, a brother.
The death of a buddy acts as the seed from which numerous elegies flower.

By its own definition, all war poetry is similar, at least thematically, regardless of the war in which it was composed. There are, however, notable differences. World War I poems reflected the wretched conditions of trench warfare.

Both World Wars and their scope of destruction and involvement of vast numbers of men vary significantly with the limited wars in Korea and Vietnam. An individual soldier can experience the pity and horror of war within the time frame of one battle and be shocked as never before. Even a two-hour battle gives sufficient material for a poet to work with. But World War II had the dulling element of endlessness which affected its soldier-poets as today's soldier-poets can never be affected. World War II plodded along campaign by campaign, and for the dogface a 12- or 13-month tour overseas with a week's paid vacation in an exotic city of his choice was unheard of.

In several ways, the poetry reflects some of these differences. Homesickness of years, not months, was a genuine infection and a common theme.

We are Bewildered and weary,
Lonely to the point of madness,
And if we shout and curse
Through our quiet dreams,

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