After months of Canadian
And American travel, a party
Boarded the boat ‘Philadelphia’ –
Bound from New York to England
Among mix of passengers,
Stepping lightly aboard,
Was the figure of one man;
Gilt haired gifted, romantically
Named Rupert Chawner Brooke.
In the uniform of poet -
Open necked shirt
And flannels, clutching
Straw hat and a given book;
‘Sons and Lovers’ –
An epitome of Edwardian
Decadence - about to fade away
Softly, from a self-assured world -
In the summer of June 1914.
A kind of time traveller, maybe -
The poet captured in photos
Possessed of a future look,
With tousled, uncombed hair –
Left to grow, slightly longer than
Oiled-down, cropped fashion
Of the day. At 26 tanned
Brooke
Often casual, without shoes, while
Acting out his rhymes on grass.
A man of boundless youth
Could have been a New Romantic
From the 1980’s or student of 2014.
A man of contradictions,
That tired easily of hero
Worshipping and awestruck
Looks, from so many girls.
‘How dull’ Brooke remarked
Of one passenger's glance.
Sailing, he sat to the stern,
Talking with friends
Who were used to his ways.
Brooke recounted stories,
In a habitual way.
Running a hand through
Dense hair -tweaking his
Nose, while nestling beneath
A blanket told tales anew.
June 5, 1914, the shore
Beckons with English scents;
Devon’s new mown grass
Drifting across the sea.
Landing at Plymouth, Brooke
Stepped onto English soil
To learn of a ship,
The Atlantic Lines'
‘Empress of India,’
Had sunk at sea -
With a large loss of life -
That had also carried for Brooke
A letter From Taatamata –
A Tahitian beauty he had met,
To become ‘too fond of’–
Her news, that would take a year,
To reach Brooke,
Was that she carried his baby.
A poet’s demands can be many,
Caught between time for seclusion
And desperation for audiences;
Only to add to Rupert Brooke’s
Restless nature - His
London arrival on June 6,
Seen by Eddie Marsh and others
Who forsook sleep to meet his train,
At 2.45 a.m. they glimpsed the man,
Before he moved on to Rugby.
Correspondence followed Brooke,
Like a flock of birds -
As he flew away from Rugby
To Cambridge, to London again
Then Gloucestershire and beyond.
But London always beckoned
Brooke back. He flitted like a bird,
That seeks a perfect nest.
His presence carried like a time link,
With others beyond his days.
A meeting of two misfits,
Over lunch Brooke and writer,
D. H. Lawrence –
While little in common, they met
In the liveliest of conversations.
Within the closing of June,
Brooke remained busy
With the London season.
Still to meet what might have been,
Fortunate connectivity,
Between two rising astral stars.
Some poetic fate over a breakfast
Invitation, brought together
Rupert Brooke
With Siegfried Sassoon –
Arranged by friend Eddie Marsh.
The encounter more a whimper
Than spectacular supernova.
In glorious hindsight's expectations
What might have been, never
Happened.
A Gathered union of minds over
Food included talented Paul Nash
And poet W.H. Davis -
Yet each moment passed on
With only polite conversation.
A growing boredom became
Apparent by Brooke’s behaviour
-
Yet Sassoon’s suppressed
Sexuality, could not deny,
A twinge of attraction for the man.
In his departure, Sassoon felt
Brooke breathed a sigh of relief.
Thus ended a meeting of war poets,
Who would form two different eras.
By close of July Eddie Marsh’s ability,
To publicise Brooke, progressed
To ever-higher circles.
Yet noise of Sarajevo shots
Started to echo- out across
A vast darkening sky,
Of stormy war clouds.
Still Rupert Brooke’s drifting
Celebrity carried him onwards -
As some doors closed
Others opened -
Still war unravelled
Between Germany and Russia,
On an August dawn.
As with Owen in Bagneries -
Brooke in London,
Considered what options
A war might hold for him.
To enlist perhaps?
Or as a war correspondent?
He drifted in wayward patriotism.
Again on the move Brooke
Was back in Rugby, turning 27.
August 4 found Brooke on the coast-
Not yet to know for another day,
Of a war declared on Germany.
Walking on a windswept beach
Brooke made a premonition;
Playing of a Tahitian gesture.
He placed a flower behind his ear -
The chosen bloom, a poppy.
Back in the capital, Brooke
Rushed about, drifting between
Excitement and caution -
Admittedly dazed and troubled,
He made escape in company
Of women - He quietly turned
Over in his mind;
Decadency versus sports,
Cynic versus romantic -
Brooke floundering, found himself
coming to his end decision -
He would wear the King’s Khaki.
Having once been seduced,
By Germanic culture -
He dwelled on how it might be,
To meet old German friends,
Out on battle grounds -
So mulled the stirrings
Of a poet soldier.
‘If Armageddon is on,
I suppose I should be there.’
Came his proclamation.
By connections of Eddie Marsh,
Brooke quickly gained
A commission -
With the backing Winston Churchill,
He would join a new type of unit;
These Naval ranks transported,
By sea to then fight on land.
In hedonistic fixing -
Without interview or form -
The deed was done.
Confessions, surfaced, as Brooke
Realised his commission -
To write how appalled
He was of himself;
Selfish and hard hearted -
He saw how stray bullet
Might finish him off;
Thus a poet’s wish
For a kind of glory,
Not dying of age in a bed.
All his romantic idealism
Had a brief knock,
As Brooke took a reality check -
In the fitting for his uniform.
All too quickly August faded,
Into September’s end –
And matters moved at a pace,
As he drilled in a depot
By Crystal Palace.
On a wave of exalted patriotism,
Brooke believed
In his joining the navy
Was the very English thing to do.
Sunday September 27,
Finally saw Brooke's last day
Of a civilian life,
Stopping at Charing Cross.
Travelling in company
Of Denis Browne,
Both men were to join
The Anson Battalion
In Betteshanger, Kent.
Sub –Lieutenant R.C. Brooke,
Stepped from a train,
To take charge of a 30 manned unit.
For a veteran from boarding school,
Camp life was not so strange -
Being used to daily sounds
Of bugle reveilles, rota’s,
Daily duties and unheated huts -
Although Scottish and Irish men,
Were Far from Rugby boys -
He looked to their solid ruggedness.
For the men under him Brooke
Could not deny thoughts
Of homoerotic considerations -
In the beauty of naked men,
Bathing in September’s sun -
Yet Brooke, the warrior,
Empties his mind at night,
As a faint bugle gives order,
‘Lights out.’
Days of drill, marches
Along Kent lanes
Inspections and sports,
Led to the start of October -
One false alarm suggested
Their imminent leave
For France -
Yet the delay was only
A week away, when reveille
Called them to Dover –
A Gloom descended
Over Brooke, as they moved
Amid Dover girls,
Giving random kisses goodbye,
While the men sang out
Music hall songs.
Dunkirk - and orders
Led them marching to Antwerp –
A city already under heavy,
German bombardment.
To instill grim determination,
One officer informed the men
They were likely all to die.
So each man sat,
Under dim lights,
Writing farewell letters home -
Among them Brooke,
Descending into anger and futility;
Made to imagine,
His very own ending.
Antwerp’s arrival found greetings
More akin to a fiesta than war -
With shouts of ‘vivant les Anglais.’
That faded as they marched
Onwards to meet a lost battle.
Edging their way to the front,
The battalion passed by,
A conveyor belt of wagons.
Wagons filled with dead,
Broken, dying men -
Punctuated by horseback
Stragglers and horse drawn
Gun limbers - All in retreat.
Without time to make much sense,
They arrived on Antwerp’s edge,
To rest at Chateau Vieux-Dieu.
Amid the rose gardens,
Latrines were quickly dug.
With darkness falling,
Brook saw the glimmers
Beyond their billet of fiery battle.
Drifting down for rest,
Disturbance came rudely at 2 a.m.
Against all their needs for sleep.
A shell burst high above the garden,
Disrupting any further rest.
With dawn’s exhausting break,
They scrambled out to the frontline
To fort 7 – relieving Belgian troops.
Each step, each yard, brought
Shell burst nearer –
But Brook endured,
In his test of courage -
Noting how odd It was that some
Men, break at danger;
Oddly, the sensitive ones do not.
Brooke was likely saved by his
Perception of unreality -
As an observer of events.
He saw high above them
Sight ff creatures – aircraft –
About which appeared puffs
Of white smoke –
News came of Brookes,
And all the Brigades,
Baggage destroyed, by barrage
At a nearby rail station,
Also came news of Chateau
Vieux-Dieu’s demise -
Then an inferno came
As struck petrol tanks
Created fiery lakes about them.
About them the fort they held,
Was slowly breaking down,
Under persistent German shells -
Then the order was made,
To retreat under darkness.
Between burning lakes of fuel,
They edged away,
On a 25-mile foot slog of a march,
To reach the river Scheldt –
With the discovery
By two German saboteurs,
Set blow up the pontoon bridge -
They were promptly shot.
Over the river the battalion merged
With haggard Belgium refugees.
Brook later describes,
The scene akin to Dante’s inferno;
Lit by ‘hills and spires of flame.’
That night Rupert Brooke
Undertook a catharsis -
A cause awoke in him
Experiencing that terrible night.
Pitiful refugees displaced,
By German policy of bullying –
Sub Lieutenant Brooke was outraged.
Brookes mind rebooted -
Was wiped, with what had occupied
Him for years - socialising,
And literature, lost its significance,
Replaced by a new cause.
Yet Brooke was still a fading echo
Of patriotism
And frenzied self-sacrifice.
Now he marched onwards,
From poetic fop to soldier warrior.
Finally they reached the railhead
At Saint-Gilles.
Boarding the trains at dawn,
To leave for safety of Bruges.
Six days only had passed
As they returned to London.
October 9 –
In battle stained uniforms he told
Churchill of his failed brainchild -
That was never to be repeated.
The mind of Sub Lieutenant Brooke
Raced, recounting accounts,
Of his sight of Antwerp' situation –
Preoccupied,
His new bouts of subdued silence
And cropped military styled hair,
Was something of a shock,
For old acquaintances.
In closing encounters
Of women who had occupied
And caused him difficulties,
Brooke moved on -
Once more to see Cathleen
By the Yarmouth sea -
Where a little time together,
Of goodbyes, sparked in him
A sonnet -
To give the poet lasting fame.
October 18 and in a turnabout
Of a lie - an old haunting ground
The vicarage at Granchester
Was about to be pulled down.
Brooke vowed he would purchase
The freehold should he survive war –
But now was his occupation,
For necessities;
Soap, tin mug and toilet rolls,
That Ka his friend might acquire.
News of the Anson Battalion’s
Transfer,
To Chatham naval barracks,
Prompted his action.
There had been rumblings
Of discontent amid the men,
For their CO, who at Antwerp,
Had told them they would die –
Through Marsh, Brooke,
Campaigned to get the callous CO,
Removed from his post.
Sub Lieutenant Brooke,
Turned his back,
On what now seemed
Like trifle ailments.
As with his friends request,
For funding -
To send a bronchial friend,
Away to warmer climates –
Priorities had changed for him;
Any spare money
Should now be given
To Belgian refugees -
His example, a consumptive girl
Who helps displaced people
In London.
Brooke gives examples of men,
Who had risked their lives,
More than once,
Over the past month.
In reflection of this changed
Mood Brooke starts work
On five sonnets, while anger
For non-combatants grows.
He states his thanks of God
For 'waking youth from sleeping.'
From socialism to patriotism
Rupert Brooke moved,
With a mood that filled
Half of Europe.
Into November,
The Sub Lieutenant's posting,
With RND Nelson Battalion,
Takes him to Portsmouth,
While toying with the idea,
Of transferring
From The Navy to the Army
For more immediate action
Taking place in France –
A light was cast into ascendancy.
by Jamie Mann.
Jones, N.,1999. Rupert Brooke – Life, Death & Mythology. London. Richard
Cohen Books. Ch 24 − 26.
#WW1 #WW1centenary #GreatWar #WW1poem #GreatWar #ww1centenary
#worldwarone #worldwaroneremembered
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