We are now starting the Nursing The Troops section of poems. You need to post at least one comment on any of the poems, paying attention to the AOs, of course. You also need to respond to a comment made by someone else. I will start us off:

The women are portrayed as courageous in these poems whether they are dealing with the physical pain the men endure or the psychological trauma they are likely to suffer. The men are presented as distracted by gramophone tunes or memories of fighting or idyllic images of life back home but it is horror that leads us through this section and it is their loss that lingers.

C Macrae

In a V A D pantry - Alberta Vickridge

Pots in piles of blue and white,
Old in service, cracked and chipped--
While the bare-armed girls tonight
Rinse and dry, with trivial-lipped
Mirth, and jests, and giggling chatter,
In this maze of curls and clatter
Is there no one sees in you
More than common white and blue?

When the potter trimmed your clay's
Sodden mass to his desire--
Washed you in the viscid glaze
That is clarified by fire--
When he sold your sort in lots,
Reckoning such as common pots--
Did he not at times foresee
Sorrow in your destiny?

Lips of fever, parched for drink
From this vessel seek relief
Ah, so often, that I think
Many a sad Last Supper's grief
Haunts it still-- that they who died,
In man's quarrel crucified,
Shed a nimbus strange and pale
Round about this humble Grail.

Alberta Vickridge

Kensington Gardens - Viviane Verne

Dappling shadows on the summer grass,
Vernal rivalry among the trees;
Lovers smiling coyly as they pass,
Sparrow’s laughing in the summer breeze.

Children playing by the placid lake,
Coaxing ducks, with greedy eyes;
Sunlight gilding rippllets that break
Where they struggle for a prize.

Jealous dogs that ‘do delight’
In frantic grappling for a stick,
Racing back with ‘bark and bite’.
To yield a trophy quite historic.

Lonely ladies dreaming in bath=chairs,
Old men taking sun baths on their seats,
Nurses softly talking in prim pairs,
Telling of their soldier lovers’ feats.

Medall’d patrols keeping austere guard,
Over radiant rose and ever-greens,
Gold-flecked finery and velvet sward,
And the quiet garden of dead queens.

Fleecy cloud in limpid blue,
Smiling down with tender mein;
Life seems simple, honest, true,
In this simple open scene.

Who would think that vault benign
God’s last area free from vice,
Initiates the aerial mine,
With babes below as sacrifice.

Sitting here on summer morn,
With the birds and babes at play.
Who could dream that sky was torn
Yesternight – with hellish spray/

It is strange that Nature’s lurement
Waits – unclaimed – for our retrievement,
While men war in false endurement
Deeming this life’s great achievement.

Viviane Verne

Joining The Colours - Katharine Tynan

THERE they go marching all in step so gay!
Smooth-cheeked and golden, food for shells and guns.
Blithely they go as to a wedding day,
The mothers' sons.

The drab street stares to see them row on row
On the high tram-tops, singing like the lark.
Too careless-gay for courage, singing they go
Into the dark.

With tin whistles, mouth-organs, any noise,
They pipe the way to glory and the grave;
Foolish and young, the gay and golden boys
Love cannot save.

High heart! High courage! The poor girls they kissed
Run with them : they shall kiss no more, alas!
Out of the mist they stepped-into the mist
Singing they pass. 

Katharine Tynan

A Girl's Song - Katharine Tynan

The Meuse and Marne have little waves;
    The slender poplars o'er them lean.
One day they will forget the graves
    That give the grass its living green.


Some brown French girl the rose will wear
    That springs above his comely head;
Will twine it in her russet hair,
    Nor wonder why it is so red.


His blood is in the rose's veins,
    His hair is in the yellow corn.
My grief is in the weeping rains
    And in the keening wind forlorn.


Flow softly, softly, Marne and Meuse;
    Tread lightly all ye browsing sheep;
Fall tenderly, O silver dews,
    For here my dear Love lies asleep.


The earth is on his sealèd eyes,
    The beauty marred that was my pride;
Would I were lying where he lies,
    And sleeping sweetly by his side!


The Spring will come by Meuse and Marne,
    The birds be blithesome in the tree.
I heap the stones to make his cairn
    Where many sleep as sound as he

Katharine Tynan

The Broken Soldier - Katharine Tynan

The broken soldier sings and whistles day to dark;
    He's but the remnant of a man, maimed and half-blind,
But the soul they could not harm goes singing like the lark,
    Like the incarnate Joy that will not be confined.

The Lady at the Hall has given him a light task,
    He works in the gardens as busy as a bee;
One hand is but a stump and his face a pitted mask;
    The gay soul goes singing like a bird set free.

Whistling and singing like a linnet on wings;
    The others stop to listen, leaning on the spade,
Whole men and comely, they fret at little things.
    The soul of him's singing like a thrush in a glade.

Hither and thither, hopping, like Robin on the grass,
    The soul in the broken man is beautiful and brave;
And while he weeds the pansies and the bright hours pass
    The bird caught in the cage whistles its joyous stave.

Katharine Tynan

The Hospital Visitor - Alys Fane Trotter

When yesterday I went to see friends – 
(Watching their patient faces in a row
I want to give each boy a D.S.O.)
When yesterday I went to see my friends
With cigarettes and foolish odds and ends,
(Knowing they understand how well I know
That nothing I can do will make amends,
But that I must not grieve, or tell them so),
A pale-faced Iniskilling, just eighteen,
Who’d fought two years, with eyes a little dim
Smiled up and showed me, there behind the screen
On the humped bandage that replaced a limb,
How someone left him, where the leg had been
A tiny green glass pig to comfort him.

Here are men who’ve learned to laugh at pain.
And if their lips have quivered when they spoke,
They’ve said brave words, or tried to make a joke,
Said it’s not worse than trenches in the rain,
Or pools of water on a chalky plain,
Or bitter cold from which you stiffly woke,
Or deep wet mud that left you hardly sane,
Or the tense wait for ‘Fritz’s master stroke’.
You seldom hear then talk of their ‘bad luck’.
And suffering has not spoiled their ready wit,
And oh! You’d hardly doubt their fighting pluck
When each new generation shows their grit,
Who never brag of blows for England struck,
But only yearn to ‘ get about a bit’.

Alys Fane Trotter

Poem Untitled - Iris Tree

And afterwards, when honour has made good,
And all you think you fight for shall take place,
A late rejoicing to a crippled race;
The bulldog’s teeth relax and snap for food,
The eagles fly to their forsaken brood,
Within the ravaged nest. When no disgrace
Shall spread a blush across the haggard face
Of anxious Pride, already flushed with blood.

In victory will you have conquered Hate,
And stuck old Folly with a bayonet
And battered down the hideous prison gate?
Or will the fatted gods be gloried yet,
Glutted with gold and dust and empty state.
The incense of our anguish and our sweat?

Iris Tree