Proud-pied April: Not this tide

As I noted a year ago, 1915 propelled us violently into the embrace of total war: unrestricted submarine attacks, chemical warfare, genocide as policy. You’d have thought that the leaders of the combatant nations had pretty well shot their murderous bolt with the decisions of that year.

But you’d be wrong.

The year 1916 seemed to increase the carnage of World War I by an order of magnitude on the Western Front. Between Verdun (ten months) and the Somme (four-and-a-half months) alone, you could have filled the 400,000 slots at Arlington National Cemetery and still have needed to dig another 150,000 graves.

So we’ll have some poetry from the First World War this month.

First up, let’s go with Rudyard Kipling, a man who believed so passionately in the war that he wrote propaganda for the British government. He viewed it as a crusade against (German) barbarism, although it cost him dearly.

Kipling’s only son John was 16 when the war started. He tried to join the Royal Navy, but failed the physical examination due to extremely poor eyesight. He failed that same physical twice for the British Army before Kipling pulled strings with Lord Roberts, and got John a commission in the Irish Guards (one of the premier regiments). Second Lieutenant John Kipling sailed for France the day after his 18^th birthday in August 1915 and was killed at the Battle of Loos a month later.

Well, technically he was reported wounded and missing, which set Kipling and his wife Caroline into that twilight of shattering grief and vicious uncertainty. Was John dead? Might he yet come back? Could there be hope? Is it better to hope for a clean death? They searched for months, calling in favors from the great and the good in search of definitive news. They never got it.

The poem “My Boy Jack” was written after John’s death. It was included in a book called Sea Warfare, about the Battle of Jutland, so it wasn’t specifically about John. The frequent mention of winds and tide are naval references, and you can hear Kipling’s belief that even terrible sacrifice was worthwhile.

“My Boy Jack”

'Have you news of my boy Jack? '

Not this tide.

'When d'you think that he'll come back? '

Not with this wind blowing, and this tide.

'Has anyone else had word of him? '

Not this tide.

For what is sunk will hardly swim,

Not with this wind blowing and this tide.

'Oh, dear, what comfort can I find? '

None this tide,

Nor any tide,

Except he did not shame his kind-

Not even with that wind blowing, and that tide.

Then hold your head up all the more,

This tide,

And every tide;

Because he was the son you bore,

And gave to that wind blowing and that tide!

Following the war, Kipling joined the Imperial War Graves Commission (now the Commonwealth War Graves Commission), which built and maintains military cemeteries around the world. They’re beautiful places, like Arlington, gardens of the dead. Kipling chose the phrase “Their Name Liveth For Evermore”, which appears on the Stones of Remembrance in the larger cemeteries. It’s from Ecclesiasticus, 44:14.

He also chose the inscription “The Glorious Dead” on the Cenotaph in Whitehall, site of the annual Remembrance Sunday observance in London. Last November, Welsh singer Cerys Matthews recited “My Boy Jack” at that ceremony, prefaced by an excerpt from a Times report of October 1915 about the numbers of only sons lost that month.

Nearly 20 years ago, British actor/writer David Haig wrote a play called My Boy Jack about Kipling and the war; it was made into a BBC film in 2007. Haig does an excellent job of setting the stage with the poet’s war fervor, showing the measures he took to get his son (played by Daniel Radcliffe) into the war and his pride at the boy’s military position. When the notification comes that John is missing at Loos, Rudyard and Caroline enter into this frantic fugue of trying to get information from anyone—field marshal to private—of their son, hoping to find him, and find him safe.

What I really love about this film is that, even as they work their connections without compunction in search of news of John, they never seem to make that other connection, the one between Kipling’s work to get men and boys to enlist in their thousands and the grief that those thousands of families suffer. Never once do they think to console anyone else who’s suffered this loss.

John was numbered among the lost-but-never-found until this year. He was initially reported as wounded and missing, but the wound had apparently ripped off his lower jaw, and his body was not found on the field. In 1991, it was determined that a grave a couple of kilometers from the battle site was his. This was disputed in 2002 by very reputable battlefield historians, but in January of this year the identification was confirmed. The Commonwealth War Graves Commission now lists him as buried in St. Mary’s ADS (Advanced Dressing Station) Cemetery in Haisnes, France.

There are nearly 2000 other Commonwealth dead lying with him. More than two-thirds of them are unidentified.