A conversation with Mr. Atkins -- 2

I wondered where were the poets of my war, and then I read Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen. 

Voices perhaps too educated, too delicate.

But weren’t they accurate as well as truthful?

Accurate in the sense of factual, yes. But truth, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. Every man has his own truth.

Facts do not equal truth.

Well said.

In the late 1920s, Humbert Wolfe spoke of “the poets of hatred,” who “burst upon the world like an angry shell.” Wolfe listed Robert Graves, Robert Nichols, Owen and Sassoon, who “one after the other blasted the romantic assumption that war was the consecration of youth by fire.” Those, he said, “flung the single word ‘Murderers.’”

Wolfe was a government man.

He was. He said, “Men were listening to this new and abominable accusation -- and even the fields, the birds and the moon could not distract them from it.” Wolfe believed in pastoral poetry and little else.

An abominable accusation, that war is what it is. Perhaps he refused to recognize facts. Or, because of his station in life, was unable to see truth.

By the end of the decade, Wolfe said, war poetry was spent. “Wilfred Owen was quiet forever,” he said. Graves better used his talent in writing plays, Wolfe said, and Sassoon eventually showed his genius. I think Wolfe saw Sassoon’s abominable accusation only as an interlude. When Sassoon got the war out of his system, he began writing real poetry, Wolfe would have us believe.

Owen was quiet forever. The dead are unable to speak.

Owen continued to speak long after he was dead. It is those who never spoke whose voices are silent.

They spoke to those whose civil breasts were wilded by flags and bands, as you put it the last time we talked.

What did they say, though? In letters home, did they write of brave lads going over the top? Those who could write, did they speak of the half a league between them and their enemy? Were there countless heroes who fell amid shot and shell? Was that what they wanted their families to believe, to remember?

What did you tell when you wrote home?

I don’t remember. The weather was hot and dry or hot and wet. I wrote about the helicopters, I think. Maybe I wrote what a marvelous thing it was, to fly above all that was below, to see the land so green, and in the far distance, the ocean. I don't think I wrote about getting shot at. I didn't write about shooting back. I didn't mention heroes. I don't know what the word means.

No drizzling daybreak to reveal disconsolate men?

I didn’t have it in me then. And most of the time not now. Was I supposed to mention mud that clung to my boots and made walking a heavy drudge? Or squadrons of mosquitoes? Scorpions the size of baby lobsters? Heat that soaked my body and sucked every gram of energy from me? I certainly couldn’t have written about fear. No, it was not my part to dissuade the valor of the cause. I’m not even sure ... I don’t know.

You would not make abominable accusations.

I didn’t have it in me. Not then. Later, when I had time to think, time to read, time to study why it all was done, I realized what it was.

You wish you didn’t know now what you didn't know then?

That isn’t it at all. When I had time to study war, the history of various wars, I wondered how men did it; I tried to determine what it was that made men, in the language of the soldier’s profession, close with the enemy, hack with sword or ax, thrust with spear, stand fifty paces apart and fire on command, walk or run through bursts of shrapnel shells and grape shot. Or in your case, go over the top again and again. And I realized that is what men do, what mankind does. I realized, too, that had I lived in a time of swords and spears and axes, I would have done the same.

We are raised a certain way. We succumb to tales of brave deeds. We believe.

We do, all of us. All people believe what is told or what they read. But if you haven’t been there ... Well, you know that.

Indeed. And having been there, do you believe less?

In what I am told, yes. You see, there was a cause, a crusade. We were the chosen ones; it was our duty to bring light to a world darkened by despots. The light was bright and shining, held aloft for all to see. All of us were to take part in the crusade. Some would bring the light by teaching, others would do physical battle with the despots and their armies. But my war changed our perception of ourselves. Suddenly, all ideas were deemed equal. There was no good, no evil. No one had the right to challenge another’s beliefs, no right to make judgment.

Judge not, lest you be judged.

Few would put it that way. In the latter years, God was dead, you see; if he ever existed at all.

I do not see God’s hand in all this.

There is an old Jewish saying: Man plans; God laughs. If you heard God’s laughter, you would see his hand in all this.