Thread: Know any good poems?

Long before Long Tan there was Kap'yong.


On the night of 23-24 April 1951, the 3rd Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment fought an action at Kapyong, Korea alongside the 2nd Battalion, Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry against overwhelming North Korean and Chinese forces.

On April 23, 3RAR and 2PPCLI occupied prominent hills on either side of a 3 1/2 mile wide valley, the Australians on Hill 504 on the east and the Canadians on the western feature Hill 677. Early in the evening, retreating South Koreans broke and ran from the Communist onslaught and the supporting tanks from the US 1st Marine Division were overrun.


Throughout the evening and night, the Communists repeatedly pressed the thinly spread Australians, attacking in human waves over their dead and wounded. A Coy, 3RAR launched a dawn counter-attack that breached the Chinese lines and was followed up by B Coy fighting hand to hand in trenches and bunkers, clearing the Communists from Hill 504. The position could not be held by the small number of Australians, and reinforcements could not be supplied by the US 1st Marine Division who had fallen back thinking the Australian position had been wiped out in the night. The Australians withdrew to prepared positions further back, supported by Artillery fire from the New Zealand 16 Field Regt. This led to the Communists being able to put intense pressure on the PPCLI position who fought a similar battle on the night of 24-25 April before themselves being relieved on 25 April under NZ artillery cover. 3RAR suffered 32 dead and 53 wounded and 2PPCLI 10 dead and 23 wounded. It was estimated the Communists suffered approx 1200 casualties from an attacking force of 7000. (I know one of those Kiwi Gunners and he was recently invited back to South Korea and presented with a 60 year anniversary medal from the Sth Korean Govtl).


This poem was written by a Kiwi Artilleryman who also was there, Maurie Gasson:


"I am standing in my garden, in the early morning haze,
Looking up towards the hillside where the quiet cattle graze,
And the fog which night has gathered on the swamp which lies between,
Forms a blanket which enhances this, my early morning scene.

But now further up the valley, from the quarry neath the hills,
Comes the sound of early blasting which my peaceful scene dispels
For the sound I hear recalls to me the echo of a gun,
In a valley in Korea in the spring of fifty one.

And the fog which shrouds the swamp land, now assumes a deeper hue
Like the gunsmoke on the paddy, in that valley that I knew,
I smell the cordite once again, and as the daylight comes,
I see spread across the valley floor, that regiment of guns.

The Middlesex ahead of us, Australians to the right,
And to the left Canadians have held on through the night.
With target after target from our O.P. on the crest,
The gunners feed the guns, their bodies crying out for rest.

For the guns, now like an orchestra, the targets they engage,
With a symphony of anger, a cacophony of rage.
And from the hill above me, just beyond the nearest crest,
Comes the stutter of the Bren guns from the infantry hard pressed.

Along the road which lies behind us come the Army Service Corps,
Dump their load of ammunition and then speed back off for more.
I see walking wounded moving through our lines, while overhead,
Fly the choppers which are lifting out the dying and the dead.

And now at last, the foe repelled, the storm and fury done,
Each weary gunner lays him down and sleeps beside his gun.

Now I hear a pheasant calling, and a stirring in the trees,
And I feel the cool caresses of an early morning breeze
I feel a hand upon my arm, a voice beside me say,
"What are you thinking of my love? You seem so far away"

My aging eyes refocus on the farmlet that we share,
The orchard with the apple trees, the peach, the plum, the pear,
The sun is up, the mist is gone, the cattle on the hill,
Are back to grazing peacefully, and all is calm and still.

You sometimes smile and tell me of the things that I forget,
People's names and missed appointments, little things like that, and yet
Despite the years that lie between, my mind can still recall,
How we held the line that April, on the road that led to Seoul.


M. E Gasson, May 2003 "


As the Anniversary for the recognition of the Battle for Kap'yong is 24 April, it is usually overshadowed by Anzac Day.

Originally Posted by bob10

Yes, the War to end all Wars. If only. the poppy, Bob


When World War 1 erupted, Northern France fields were damaged from the trenches and the shelling. After the conflict, the only plants to grow on the battlefields were poppies.
The significance of the poppy came about due to a Canadian Surgeon John McCrae writing a poem. McCrae presided over the funeral of his friend Lieutenant Alex Helmer who’d been killed during the Second Battle of Ypres - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
He wrote the poem as he sat upon the back of a medical field ambulance, not far from an advance dressing post at Essex Farm, just north of Ypres.
McCrae later discarded the poem, however,a fellow officer sent it to Punch magazine. Later that year it was published.

In Flanders Fields
In Flanders fields, the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the dead, short days ago,
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields!
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands, we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields!

By John McCrae

first line ends with the word GROW...

McCrae wasnt originally credited as the author (it was listed anonymously) but later this was corrected.

Operating in tents even into the winter until they were able to move the surgery areas into a building, McCRAE caught pneumonia (? <-sp?) and
died in 1918. (I believe) He was buried with full military honours (I believe in Belgium but that could also be wrong- working the grey cells here...)

Apparently he often stated that the version of Flanders Field that was being commonly printed or used wasn't the one he had written, but he also allegedly wasn't very concerned so long as the message still was conveyed.

I recall hearing that there was something about his tombstone that was unusual or different to the normal military cemetery in its design or set up but cannot recall what that was. (Ill go looking tonight maybe, I believe I have some stuff about McCrae in a WWI book I have.)

Originally Posted by waz

I thought the shortest poem was by Muhammad Ali

Me,
We.

Written as a statement of solidarity with the African people when he went over for the Rumble in the Jungle.

Waz

I dont know about poems but I heard the longest sentence and shortest sentence are the same

" I DO". apparently one leads to the other...

There is an excellent book, written by Jack Galloway, paperback, titled ' Last Call Of the Bugle', about the Australian volunteers who joined up for the Korean War. The story behind the title is,


" for more than 5 decades since the raising of the first expeditionary force in the Sudan in 1896, Australian troops who served overseas were citizen soldiers, volunteers raised from amongst the general community. In the soldiers argot of the day these volunteers were said to have 'heard the bugle', whilst those who enlisted some time after hostilities were sometimes asked if they were ' a bit hard of hearing', or told they were a ' bit slow hearing the bugle'. .....The Korean War was the last occasion this occurred, the last call of the bugle. " [ from the foreword]


The 27th British Commonwealth Brigade was in the thick of the action from the start, another extract;


"In the advance into North Korea, gross error that it was, the 8th Army [USA] moved on a narrow and road bound front - so narrow as to accommodate only a Brigade forward. During the advance to the North Korean capital,27 BCB was at point for the 8th Army [USA] . 3 Battalion [ Australian] was leading the Brigade when the capture of thousands of prisoners at Sariwon left no substantial formed body of troops to defend Pyongyang. For the whole of the remainder of the advance into North Korea, it was the troops of the 27th British Commonwealth Brigade who led the way. " it goes on;


" No account of these operations fails to tell of the spectacular insertion by parachute of the 187th American Airborne regiment at Sukchon and Sunchon but a reader will search in vain for mention of how the Americans became disastrously unstuck and were rescued from disaster by the Australians, . Relying upon their own small arms and morters, 3 Battallions forward companies tore into a whole regiment of North Koreans and annihilated them while the US Army's elite troops stood and watched. "


The books' cover says ' the long road to Kapyong' with the battle of the apple orchard, battle of the broken ridge, battle at Chongju, battle at Pakchon , battle for Chipyong-ni among them. The 27 BCB had to be one of the best Commonwealth units , and 3 battalion, Australian, its best Battalion.


Last call of the bugle




In Pusan there is hallowed ground
A simple cross to mark each mound
They bought us there from whence we died
To lie together side by side


Our country's call, that bugle sound
We answered. We were honour bound.
They said the cause was just, you know.
But then, was this not always so?.


Strange country and a stranger war,
It made no odds - we knew the score.
We were blood brothers, truth to tell,
In valiant company when we fell.


Seek not our grave, and do not weep
We are not there. We do not sleep.
The life we gave was ours to give.
Remember this, and we still live .


For like the tireless wind that blows,
chilled by endless northern snows
Or warmed in harsher southern lands
Of spinifex and desert sands


Part of the sounds of morning's hush,
Kin to the swift demanding rush
Of noisy flocks in searching flight
As sunlight softens passing night.


We touch the fields of ripening grain
Red cattle grazing sun drenched plain.
We span the forest, farm , to reach
The towns and cities, oceans beach


Long gone that bugles strident blast
We kept the faith, we were the last.
Seek not our grave, weep not , or cry
We are not there, we did not die.




LEST WE FORGET, Bob

Originally Posted by digger

first line ends with the word GROW...

Sorry , Digger, I think if you read this, the word is blow, the explanation is in the text after the poem Bob





In Flanders Fields
By: Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD (1872-1918)
Canadian Army

In Flanders Fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Courtesy of Bee MacGuire
Obtained From TheMcCrae Museum of The Guelph Museum

McCrae's "In Flanders Fields" remains to this day one of the most memorable war poems ever written. It is a lasting legacy of the terrible battle in the Ypres salient in the spring of 1915. Here is the story of the making of that poem:

Although he had been a doctor for years and had served in the South African War, it was impossible to get used to the suffering, the screams, and the blood here, and Major John McCrae had seen and heard enough in his dressing station to last him a lifetime.
As a surgeon attached to the 1st Field Artillery Brigade, Major McCrae, who had joined the McGill faculty in 1900 after graduating from the University of Toronto, had spent seventeen days treating injured men -- Canadians, British, Indians, French, and Germans -- in the Ypres salient.
It had been an ordeal that he had hardly thought possible. McCrae later wrote of it:
"I wish I could embody on paper some of the varied sensations of that seventeen days... Seventeen days of Hades! At the end of the first day if anyone had told us we had to spend seventeen days there, we would have folded our hands and said it could not have been done."
One death particularly affected McCrae. A young friend and former student, Lieut. Alexis Helmer of Ottawa, had been killed by a shell burst on 2 May 1915. Lieutenant Helmer was buried later that day in the little cemetery outside McCrae's dressing station, and McCrae had performed the funeral ceremony in the absence of the chaplain.
The next day, sitting on the back of an ambulance parked near the dressing station beside the Canal de l'Yser, just a few hundred yards north of Ypres, McCrae vented his anguish by composing a poem. The major was no stranger to writing, having authored several medical texts besides dabbling in poetry.
In the nearby cemetery, McCrae could see the wild poppies that sprang up in the ditches in that part of Europe, and he spent twenty minutes of precious rest time scribbling fifteen lines of verse in a notebook.
A young soldier watched him write it. Cyril Allinson, a twenty-two year old sergeant-major, was delivering mail that day when he spotted McCrae. The major looked up as Allinson approached, then went on writing while the sergeant-major stood there quietly. "His face was very tired but calm as we wrote," Allinson recalled. "He looked around from time to time, his eyes straying to Helmer's grave."
When McCrae finished five minutes later, he took his mail from Allinson and, without saying a word, handed his pad to the young NCO. Allinson was moved by what he read:
"The poem was exactly an exact description of the scene in front of us both. He used the word blow in that line because the poppies actually were being blown that morning by a gentle east wind. It never occurred to me at that time that it would ever be published. It seemed to me just an exact description of the scene."
In fact, it was very nearly not published. Dissatisfied with it, McCrae tossed the poem away, but a fellow officer retrieved it and sent it to newspapers in England. The Spectator, in London, rejected it, but Punch published it on 8 December 1915.
Thanks to Mack Welford for reminding me of this great poem. Updated: 12 November 2008 Updated: 9 November 2009

Perhaps "The Ball at Kirriemuir" for those amongst us of Scots ancestry.

Unfortunately most of the good poems I know aren't really suitable for a family friendly forum ...

I don't consider it a great poem, but I remember the circumstances in which I heard it.

When I was teaching at Narrabri High School in the 1970s, the Australian poet Eric Rolls was invited to speak to some of the English classes.

The only one of his poems that I still remember was one that he used to illustrate the idea that not all poems need to be serious. The students enjoyed it!

I have forgotten the name of the poem.

"What will you have?" said the waiter,
reflectively picking his nose.
"Two boiled eggs, you bastard.
You can't put your fingers in those."