The following epic poem, written by the late Richard Ball, was published in 1969 by Gazebo Books, a small publishing company that I owned back then. At that time Richard Ball was working as a Desk Sergeant in Bedminster Police Station, Bristol. We became firm friends and spent many hours in each other's company discussing poetry in particular and the world in general. This poem, which was published in a little book titled 'In Memory of Dylan Thomas, including Rearguard Action at Dunkirk,' is one born out of personal experience, for Richard Ball was himself a Dunkirk veteran. He was a brilliant wordsmith, and I considered it a great privilege to be his publisher as well as his friend. With the Dunkirk Miracle much in the news currently, I thought it would be expedient to share this work with a wider audience.
REARGUARD ACTION AT DUNKIRK
For every battle of the warrior is with confused noise, and garments rolled in blood; but this shall be with burning, and fuel of fire. ISAIAH, IX, 5.A battalion of the Grenadier Guards, part of the British Expeditionary Force sent to France with the 3rd British Infantry Division in September, 1939, marches towards a section of the canal defences in front of FURNES in June, 1940, where it will relieve a line of French machine-gunners, with their `mitrailleuses'. The Guards are prepared to make a last stand, in an effort to hold the line, and allow the remnants of the British Army to be evacuated from DUNKIRK. The trenches are found to be too shallow for the guardsmen, who have to commence digging to make them habitable.
PART I.
Marching to the Rendezvous
.
Trudging their wayin lines, with heavy packs and shovels,
and rifles slung, and rounds to serve them,
they heard the siege-guns crack,
and like an old ripped sack,
a marcher lifted in the air,
and then, no more encumbered
by false hope, and fear,
lay sundered.
Around the sorry, squandered flesh
tired feet still tramped
where huddled muscles twitched and trembled,
that once had prompted thoughts
of field and river,
tasted good hours,
and rambled the roads of shires,
but now, as refuse of this war,
were wasted,
without rites of prayers,
for there was not time for burial.
It seemed like some strange astral dream
of worlds gashed wide, of voids, of spaces,
and fears of voids, and hell,
and doom,
where rocked the deadened hulks of men
on balls of feet that ached,
or spilled in spells of flame
that flared, and plied on twisted faces,
raked by the human, guided steel
that tracked them down
in the long fierce light that chases.
But these poor pawns
shrugged death
off dumbly;
long lusts of guns that ate them
with their breath,
in the stark time that saw no sleeping,
and the creeping,
scraping soles that shuffled,
made of each one a live-dead drooping thing,
that aped an outan's crouch,
and muzzled thoughts, that baffled
usage of right words to tell of pain,
had aged them
to a vagrant's slouch.
PART II.
The Meeting of the Soldiers
.
LES POILUS PARLENT:
`Voila les Anglais,
comme ils sont grands,
ils sont les Grenadiers,
allons, les Allemands
ils s'approchent'.
LES ANGLAIS PENSENT:
`Please go, allez, you squat men,
you olive men, our allies,
your mitrailleuses o'er shoulders;
dwindle away, lost in the
melee of the distance;
we wish you well, a few will remain
as Free French, some will stumble,
mortified by the singing shrapnel,
or the buzzing bee of leaden death
that lifts the layers of the
very dead to visibility.
A nod, a smile, grateful smile,
then pass into smoke you tired men,
into the endless dust of man's decadence,
where mind and soul rest in oblivion'.
PART III.
The Thin, Torn Line
.
LES POILUS PARLENT:
`Voila les Anglais,
comme ils sont grands,
ils sont les Grenadiers,
allons, les Allemands
ils s'approchent'.
LES ANGLAIS PENSENT:
`Please go, allez, you squat men,
you olive men, our allies,
your mitrailleuses o'er shoulders;
dwindle away, lost in the
melee of the distance;
we wish you well, a few will remain
as Free French, some will stumble,
mortified by the singing shrapnel,
or the buzzing bee of leaden death
that lifts the layers of the
very dead to visibility.
A nod, a smile, grateful smile,
then pass into smoke you tired men,
into the endless dust of man's decadence,
where mind and soul rest in oblivion'.
PART III.
The Thin, Torn Line
.
They worked, balanced
on rubber limbs
that limped, and sagged, and sweated,
scraped at the stone, and earth,
while across the folds of fields,
the lolling skulls that fretted,
watched for the swarms of grey.
There was a hoping, chasing
out the deeper, worrying lines,
despite great ires of guns,
that no hope stayed,
and hungers
that only a man with
loaves and fishes left for all
could hope to ease,
and ever bring them peace.
The only one who killed himself
had died when nerves could
no more hold him taut from
shafts beside him.
The order given to unfix steel from steel
had come too late,
and he would wait
for rest no longer.
His death was a mental
lurch down slopes of pain,
of which a stranger wrote ―
his note was plain,
he called it `accidental'.
No bugle calls
for these sad, blackened ears,
no cries of acclamation,
save for the call of
death's drear flaunting,
and the haunting
wail of shells, the
thrash of flesh, the splinters' fall,
as wave on wave they called
for hour on hour,
their special cry for all.
The snipers were but pests,
as of small pinging mites
that found a branch, and whined,
or creased an arm, or tore a tendon
loose from bone,
to these, no more a mishap
than ricked shanks of other follies,
on other fields of home.
And so, hours passed,
unfeelingly, they traced
their round way, unblessed
by these dumb men,
throttled in sleep,
and part collapsed,
the shades of men, as ancient portraits,
lined, and grained, and still as dust.
And now they had shot,
and killed, and stayed,
and done their work of war,
these old scarred clans,
wearing death's smudge,
scattered as blooms in winds,
and just as unremembered.
PART IV.
Retreat to the Sea
.
on rubber limbs
that limped, and sagged, and sweated,
scraped at the stone, and earth,
while across the folds of fields,
the lolling skulls that fretted,
watched for the swarms of grey.
There was a hoping, chasing
out the deeper, worrying lines,
despite great ires of guns,
that no hope stayed,
and hungers
that only a man with
loaves and fishes left for all
could hope to ease,
and ever bring them peace.
The only one who killed himself
had died when nerves could
no more hold him taut from
shafts beside him.
The order given to unfix steel from steel
had come too late,
and he would wait
for rest no longer.
His death was a mental
lurch down slopes of pain,
of which a stranger wrote ―
his note was plain,
he called it `accidental'.
No bugle calls
for these sad, blackened ears,
no cries of acclamation,
save for the call of
death's drear flaunting,
and the haunting
wail of shells, the
thrash of flesh, the splinters' fall,
as wave on wave they called
for hour on hour,
their special cry for all.
The snipers were but pests,
as of small pinging mites
that found a branch, and whined,
or creased an arm, or tore a tendon
loose from bone,
to these, no more a mishap
than ricked shanks of other follies,
on other fields of home.
And so, hours passed,
unfeelingly, they traced
their round way, unblessed
by these dumb men,
throttled in sleep,
and part collapsed,
the shades of men, as ancient portraits,
lined, and grained, and still as dust.
And now they had shot,
and killed, and stayed,
and done their work of war,
these old scarred clans,
wearing death's smudge,
scattered as blooms in winds,
and just as unremembered.
PART IV.
Retreat to the Sea
.
They were too young
for fires that seethed,
and cleft the breath,
who were resigned
that day to sacrifice ―
and they were too old with death,
and trials of the sharp steel.
They had crouched low,
the night before disaster,
where a fitful truce
of sleepless nerves
spun strange scenes slowly ―
time's muted grains moved surely,
where star shells, looping,
lit the remnants
of a human torso, lifting lamely,
as spent nerves stirred its stillness
to eternity.
The order was discreet,
and rearguards shuffled,
their ragged sleeves upon their feet
for silence;
men with fear, ingrained,
moved carefully,
mouths agape,
hearts hammering,
that in this last spun coin
they might never share again
the airs of England.
It was so quiet,
of an early hour of quiet,
the lull of disillusionment ―
spotter flares
gaped, the great guns grumbled,
and bursting shocks stunned ears
down earth that shuddered ―
men who huddled close
in hillocks hewn by impact,
crawled and prayed,
until, exhausted, and afraid,
they lay upon a beach,
and listened to the music of the sea.
PART V.
Evacuation
.
for fires that seethed,
and cleft the breath,
who were resigned
that day to sacrifice ―
and they were too old with death,
and trials of the sharp steel.
They had crouched low,
the night before disaster,
where a fitful truce
of sleepless nerves
spun strange scenes slowly ―
time's muted grains moved surely,
where star shells, looping,
lit the remnants
of a human torso, lifting lamely,
as spent nerves stirred its stillness
to eternity.
The order was discreet,
and rearguards shuffled,
their ragged sleeves upon their feet
for silence;
men with fear, ingrained,
moved carefully,
mouths agape,
hearts hammering,
that in this last spun coin
they might never share again
the airs of England.
It was so quiet,
of an early hour of quiet,
the lull of disillusionment ―
spotter flares
gaped, the great guns grumbled,
and bursting shocks stunned ears
down earth that shuddered ―
men who huddled close
in hillocks hewn by impact,
crawled and prayed,
until, exhausted, and afraid,
they lay upon a beach,
and listened to the music of the sea.
PART V.
Evacuation
.
Four o'clock
broke tall in rifts
of grey
that probed down lengths of sands,
where, into view, morose
small bands
of men bunched close,
as though pressed
down by death's
grave fist ―
soft wisps of breaths
rose curiously,
and silently, as skeins of men
slow-shuffled to the sea.
Boats slid away,
hull down with wounded ―
humane, unwritten laws had
claimed them,
but, as grounded
prows pushed on,
those made strange with fear
rose, and detained them.
Shots that came
told all the shame
that friend had killed a friend
that other friends would live.
Released,
the boats swept on,
where corpses floated,
and no man knew what waited ―
those that with baited
breath
had spun the same grim coin again.
Not for them
sick tastes of women fated
for new births,
but the explosive
pulse of death.
An officer, face
maligned by fate that maims,
lurched on, the round,
revolting gouts of life
leaked out of him,
spending his veins ―
but great rough hands
of others seized
him, and as the tides
were smoothing out the sands,
closing them in, they teased
the great gaping wounds
into their place,
and as the tube that
led a slobbering life to lungs
breathed
on, the blood soaked eyes
turned from death's door,
and thanked them,
yet no-one spoke,
nor went his ways,
for all believed
that here, rough-shod,
they had re-found their God.
But words proclaimed
by distant shouts
throated to a roar ―
"Every man for himself",
storm waves that sheet the shores
stormed in them, furtive,
that made the early, crouching motive,
long dead by old wigged laws,
and time, revive.
In nightmare moments,
vials of Zeus spilled slowly ―
latent instincts
that had flamed as wounds, were wild
in flailing waters,
where great bids for life
outmoded pity.
The hulls some sought
were hewn apart
before they reached them,
explosive rage would grip them
in the thousand deaths that breached them,
and iconoclasts of men
long dead, would shift in shrouds,
that furls of flesh, rent in such scraps,
would once more float in air, or lie in dust,
on waves that later beached them.
Those few, where fortune chanced,
heard hard seas that glanced
on cliffs of speaking shores,
and as they gained
old hearths of fires
long dimmed,
the men with eyes alive to see
became true men,
Englishmen.
© Richard Ball/Voice Publications
broke tall in rifts
of grey
that probed down lengths of sands,
where, into view, morose
small bands
of men bunched close,
as though pressed
down by death's
grave fist ―
soft wisps of breaths
rose curiously,
and silently, as skeins of men
slow-shuffled to the sea.
Boats slid away,
hull down with wounded ―
humane, unwritten laws had
claimed them,
but, as grounded
prows pushed on,
those made strange with fear
rose, and detained them.
Shots that came
told all the shame
that friend had killed a friend
that other friends would live.
Released,
the boats swept on,
where corpses floated,
and no man knew what waited ―
those that with baited
breath
had spun the same grim coin again.
Not for them
sick tastes of women fated
for new births,
but the explosive
pulse of death.
An officer, face
maligned by fate that maims,
lurched on, the round,
revolting gouts of life
leaked out of him,
spending his veins ―
but great rough hands
of others seized
him, and as the tides
were smoothing out the sands,
closing them in, they teased
the great gaping wounds
into their place,
and as the tube that
led a slobbering life to lungs
breathed
on, the blood soaked eyes
turned from death's door,
and thanked them,
yet no-one spoke,
nor went his ways,
for all believed
that here, rough-shod,
they had re-found their God.
But words proclaimed
by distant shouts
throated to a roar ―
"Every man for himself",
storm waves that sheet the shores
stormed in them, furtive,
that made the early, crouching motive,
long dead by old wigged laws,
and time, revive.
In nightmare moments,
vials of Zeus spilled slowly ―
latent instincts
that had flamed as wounds, were wild
in flailing waters,
where great bids for life
outmoded pity.
The hulls some sought
were hewn apart
before they reached them,
explosive rage would grip them
in the thousand deaths that breached them,
and iconoclasts of men
long dead, would shift in shrouds,
that furls of flesh, rent in such scraps,
would once more float in air, or lie in dust,
on waves that later beached them.
Those few, where fortune chanced,
heard hard seas that glanced
on cliffs of speaking shores,
and as they gained
old hearths of fires
long dimmed,
the men with eyes alive to see
became true men,
Englishmen.
© Richard Ball/Voice Publications
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