? For Bobpike - Gallipoli Poetry

[frev]

Bob,

I've just finished John Masefield's "Gallipoli" - and his incredible descriptions (written in 1916) left me wondering about his connection to both the Country & the men.

The blurb simply mentioned he was a "great English writer", so (excuse my ignorance!) I went 'googling'.

After discovering that he had served on a hospital ship at Gallipoli - and as a member of the War Propaganda Bureau, had access to military documents - and (as I should have guessed) was a Poet Laureate - it all became clearer.

So I went googling for his inevitable book of Gallipoli / War poems - or at least a mention of one poem on the subject - and came up blank.

Surely this can't be so?

So I was wondering if you had any references in the bibliography you're compiling?

Or was perhaps "Gallipoli" his "Odyssey"?

Cheers, Frev.

[bobpike]

Frev,

With the outbreak of war, Masefield become an orderly at a British Red Cross hospital in France. Here he experienced the horror of modern warfare and planned how to improve conditions for the wounded. Raising money himself, he intended to create a travelling field hospital but, in the event, this was abandoned after a request for assistance in the Dardanelles. Thus Masefield took charge of a motor boat ambulance service at Gallipoli in 1915. After the Allied failure there Masefield turned his attention to America and undertook a series of lectures which would enable him to assess American feeling towards the war and plead the Allied cause. The negative American impression of the Dardanelles campaign was one contributory factor to Masefield’s history of Gallipoli - an instant success and described by one critic as ‘a book to strike the critical faculty numb’ and ‘too sacred for applause’.

Such was Masefield’s triumph that an invitation was received from Sir Douglas Haig to write the chronicle of the Somme. Whitehall bureaucracy eventually forced Masefield to abandon the original plan and the Somme chronicle eventually appeared as two truncated volumes: The Old Front Line and The Battle of the Somme

These are his Gallipoli-related poems that I know of :-

In ‘Gallipoli’ - 1915 - The Island of Skyros

Also to be found in A Treasury of War Poetry ed. George H Clarke. Hodder & Stoughton 1917 - The Island of Skyros (pages 380 to 381)

‘On the Dead in Gallipoli’. From ‘Poems’ 1915 (publ. Heineman) and also the following extract from it is in 'Gallipoli – The New Zealand Story. C Pugsley' (Page 271)

They came from safety of their own free will

To lay their young men’s beauty, strong men’s powers

Under the hard roots of the foreign flowers

Having beheld the Narrows from the Hill.

[Guest Pete Wood]

Masefield is an interesting chap to me.

He and his wife put up much of the money to launch Roy Manning Pike's first business, making bronze lamps. Manning Pike used this expertise to produce all the memorial plaques for the WW1 fallen.

Masefield lost his son in WW2:

Name: MASEFIELD, LEWIS CROMNELIN

Initials: L C

Nationality: United Kingdom

Rank: Private

Regiment: Royal Army Medical Corps

Age: 31

Date of Death: 29/05/1942

Service No: 7387591

Casualty Type: Commonwealth War Dead

Grave/Memorial Reference: Coll. grave 8 D. 20-23.

Cemetery: KNIGHTSBRIDGE WAR CEMETERY, ACROMA

Just like Rudyard Kipling, who lost his son in WW1, and became heavily involved with the memorial plaque project and the Imperial War Graves Commission (now CWGC), Masefield wanted to be involved in remembering his son and the fallen.

Masefield produced the words for the scroll of honour which was given to the next of kin of all those who were killed (or died) in WW2.

[frev]

Bob,

Thanks for the info on his 2 poems - I'll be on the lookout for them - and if I ever come across any more I'll let you know.

Bob & Pete,

Thanks for all the extra info on Masefield himself - obviously a great man as well as a great writer.

Cheers, Frev.