Friday, August 10, 2018

A Yank at the Battle of Amiens: The Chipilly Ridge Sonnets of John Allan Wyeth



This essay, in its entirety, is included in the newly-released book Before the Clangor of the Gun: the First World War Poetry of John Allan Wyeth.  

Here is an excerpt:

"The night of August 8-9. Gas masks on, and led by runners, lieutenants Wyeth and Cochrane set out on foot, in search of 2nd Battalion headquarters, situated roughly six hundred yards to the south, close to the river. Everywhere there are ominous signs of "evil creeping in the dark." With steel helmets for laurel, Virgil and Dante unholster their sidearms and wend their way through the Inferno of the Somme. Horse-drawn artillery crashes by, and columns of rushing soldiers, with both man and beast wearing alien masks in a futuristic nightmare, or a scene out of Bosch. A distant sneeze and their own burning eyes tell them that they are venturing into an area of lethal gas, and then they cross paths with their first gas victim, "... blind twisting head and drunken knees, ~ like Christ." ~~ and with that final image of Golgotha, the apocalyptic scene is complete."




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