War Poet 'Private' John Smith

The project to bring together information about my grandfather at the battle of Passchendaele WW1 continues. It is slightly marred by the fact he was John Smith the most common name and there are over 4000 of them in the war records so without his war record number I can't put up a Life Story of him on the WW1 website the link for which I enclose here 

Because it is National Poetry Day I thought I would commemorate his Poetry by listing some of it below. The photo of him is from his World War 2 days when he was working as a translator of German, a soldier and intelligence officer capturing German spies.

                                       Sergeant John Smith Dispatches World War 1 and 2 

Storm and War

Storm

All day, all night, along the storm-swept shore,

The gale, blind giant astride the waves, drives hard,

They madly gallop and crash with thundering roar,

To spumy fragments rent -such is their reward-

Tis nature's law alone that they hold in regard.

White birds on tense wings above the chaos ride,

Flying, unresting as the wild gale raves.

Seeing destruction scattered far and wide,

When seaweed and silken tresses the storm laves:

Unwitting they scar, glide,wheel, o'er unsought graves.

War

All day, all night, along earth's war swept coasts,

War, grim tyrant, astride the nations, drives them hard,

And they assenting, crash midst thundering hosts,

To gory fragments rent - such is their reward -

Lured on by wealth and power, vain, illusive ghosts.

White love on strong wings above war's chaos glides,

Yearns, unresting, questing for the peace of home,

Longs to stop destruction ranging far and wide

O'er all earth's coasts and oceans embattled foam:

Waiting, oh Man, to make they errant heart her home.

'Leven Mail' (East Fife Mail) 25^th Feb 1953 SAR TOR

Aftermath 1945

Give me the quiet autumnal hours

Those mellow hours that soothe

After the toil of battling day,

While our dead companions of the May

Now scan a deeper truth

Than we read in the Flowers,

And still know happier hours

Beyond their toil, Beyond the calm

We now enjoy: They add unto our rest

A richness else unknown

Mild as yon evening star is

When autumn scents

Are by the Zephers Strewn

SAR TOR, (John Smith)

Written 10^th May 1945

Haig and his Heroes

A Garland o' Poppies and Heather

I'll weave them a garland of Poppies and Heather,

For poppies and heather shall never decay.

Entwined with our hearts it shall bloom for ever,

Inspiring us all to match needs of the day.

Frae land o' the heather the callants a' rallied,

And marched to the field in the wild battle array;

Where fighting was hottest, 'twas there that they tarried,

When over the top, were first up and away.

Haig, son o' the heather, big deeds was aye planning,

He saw the way throught at the tail o' the day.

At grey dawn his lads o' the heather were scanning,

The track, with its horrors thought which victory lay.

He planned and they did, they worked to each other,

Their trust it was mutual, its worth who can say?

All is secure when man's true to his brother,

And people thus loyal shall never decay.

As in their loyalty they triumphed together,

Through grim weary hours of war's stormy day

Now they are resting neath poppies and heather,

And loyalty's bright star leads peace on her way.

So I'll weave them a garland o' poppies and heather.

For poppies and heather are nobler than bay.

Entwined with our hearts it shall bloom for ever,

And Caledon's minstrels have theme for their lay.

Methil 18^th Feb 1928 Sartor

Earl Haig

The Appeal of his Deathless Army

We hear a muffled murmour saying 'He is dead'

A strange dawn of hope comes under the ground,

To us who lie shattered by fierce of steel and lead,

In darky shade of a grass-green mound

We grinning awake and feel ere long.

That our brave Commander shall be coming along.

Through death he lives with his armies again

And we stir to a glow with the sound of his name;

We spring to attention, give a loud ringing cheer,

Our brave loyal commander, he is near, he is here.

We salute him now as we salued him then.

His care is renewed for all his men, all his men.

We have missed him a while but he's here at last,

And we will follow him on yet again

Past where roaring shells have crashed

And bullets whined like rain

We will follow him onto further fields

And revel in hell-glare fun.

As we faught by him then,

And we will follow him now

And fight till his victory is won.

We have watched all your ways

Through those horrible days,

That have stretched to wearying years,

And you have paid our chums,

Who fed the guns

With hunger and bitter tears.

He pled for our pals,

But you spurnned his calls;

Your a long way yet in arrears,

You would cower and pray.

Or move shame-faced away,

If your heard our ringing cheers.

And we follow him on to further fields.

Facing flare of a hell-fired gun;

And we fought by him then,

We'll follow him now,

And fight till his victor is won.

Our stuggles through blood and fire were great,

And we were loyal and true.

His pleading for our pals are great.

Will you be loyal too?

Oh follow his lead, as we followed it then,

And treat our pals as chums, Be Men!

Follow him onto further fields.

Dare all in his work begun.

Give freely as we gave it then

Our pals and chums are worthy men.

And we'll rest in his victory then.

SARTOR 2^nd February 1928

3 War Poems from John Smith, 'Sartor', Maternal Grandfather of

Mairi Sutherland

mairi.sutherland@gmail.com 

The Battle of Passchendaele Private John Smith- Grandfather I knew

It is such a shame that my busy life took me away from this blog for a while, because most of my summer has been taken up with editing  my visit to Ypres, of the commemorations of Passchendaele as a descendant of a soldier who was at the battle. He was my mother's father John Smith and the grandfather I knew and who was present when I was a child.

                                                      Wife Tabitha and baby Tabitha with Private John Smith

Despite being at the battle, he lived to be 76, and he was present at my home, when I had just started school. I fondly remember him helping me and my mother peel potatoes as well as  showing me the childhood pastime of making paper chains. He died of Esophageal cancer in 1965 arguably from the effects of living through World War One.

While at the battle of Passchendaele he received mustard gas poisoning and in the last days of the carnage he was invalided out of it in the middle of November 1917. He told the story of being unconscious for some time and remembered waking up in hospital hearing Christmas Carol singers. He said he thought he had died and gone to Heaven. After being sent from the Western Front to one hospital and another, he finally ended up at Craiglockhart War Hospital in Edinburgh where it seems he was treated for shell shock, now known as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

There he met the famous war poets Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen. It was while learning to combat the effects of shell shock, at Craiglockhart, where writing was considered a helpful cure, that he began to pen war poetry in the same style as his mentor Wilfred Owen.

Through his life he continued to write poetry both about the War and other subjects. His poems were published in the East Fife Newspapers, in Scotland, under the nom de plume Sartor,which is Latin for tailor, after his civilian day job. His poetry extends to 2 volumes of notebooks.

The commemorations were a wonderful experience, not just for remembering the fallen, in such a dignified way, but because they were an opportunity to revisit the past and preserve the items belonging to John Smith, a task that continues today with a documentary I am making about his life.

The commemorations gave hundreds of descendants a chance to treasure the memory and impact of the achievements of their relatives by launching a unique social history project managed by the UK Department of Culture, the Museum of Passchendaele in Flanders and the website Ancestry.co.uk It continues to be on going project allowing thousands of descendants to build on what they found out then add to the new profiles they have discovered about the participants of Passchendaele.

The battle was distinguished from any other in World War 1 for having the most casualties of 500,000 in total in Allied, British and German casualties combined.  It was the first and arguably the last battle to use Mustard gas, and it will go down in history as ending it's use as an a weapon of war. By World War 2 Mustard gas was banned under the Geneva Convention of the United Nations Charter.  The voices of the War poets contributed to the end of Mustard gas in 20th Century warfare. It is therefore tragic that it seems to have reappeared in the 21st Century.

(This blog will re visit the subject of Private John Smith with photographs, poems and further descriptions over the coming months.)