Poems from a Forgotten War: The War to End All Wars
by Gordon B. Birrel

Compiled by
Donna Benedetti
Designed by Jeremy Thornton
69 pages, perfect bound
2012

 

 

All those men killed. Our war ending and so many men killed. I was sick. I cannot list all the wars of the twentieth century, but when they do come to mind, I have the same sickness . . .

– Gordon Birrel

Poems from a Forgotten War:
The War to End All Wars
by Gordon B. Birrel


MOVING UP

Avoid barbed
wire on the right. Avoid
the inconspicuous cadaver
on the left. Our burying
squad will be along. Quiet!
Move up! Our job is,
make newer, more appropriate
cadavers before us; and by due
care (and any luck at all)
postpone for ourselves such
untoward metamorphosis.
Avoid another cadaver
on the left.


– from Gordon B. Birrel's Poems from a Forgotten War


My grandfather, Gordon Brown Birrel, was one of the young innocents drawn to fight for love of country—his country of choice and birthright being Scotland. He was a poet, a sensitive and sensible man, and still a college student in the United States. Nevertheless, in the summer of 1917, he eagerly headed for Canada as a new recruit in the Canadian army. After almost a year of training to be a soldier, Gordon marched with the 116th Canadian Battalion into the trenches and the horrors of World War I.

His experience of war was that of fighting in the trenches . . . escaping snipers’ bullets . . . standing nighttime trench watch . . . taking lonely, perilous outpost duty between the German and Canadian lines—no man’s land . . . digging new trenches and repairing the old ones . . . witnessing the killings of seasoned soldiers and new recruits alike . . . burying the dead, as many as possible, as much as possible . . . breathing dirt, dust, filth, gas . . . running, standing and living in boot-deep mud trenches . . . endless hours and days of waiting, watching, listening, trying to stay awake and alive . . . marching and running through open fields as open targets . . . thousands—no tens of thousands—of shell burst, whiz bangs, heavy artillery, machine gun barrages . . . and fighting in places whose names were unknown and in other places named Amiens, Arras, Cambrai, Valenciennes and, finally, Mons, recaptured by the 116th on November 10th.

This “war to end all wars” ended on November 11, 1918, at 11:00 a.m.—the day after the 116th declared victory in Mons. The story its numbers tell can barely touch the surface of the horrific human tragedy: over 9 million soldiers killed, more than 21 million wounded, and another 5 million civilians killed.

My grandfather was one of the lucky ones who had, at least physically, survived the war. In that sense, he emerged a whole man. Psychologically, however, he left the battlefields of Europe an injured and scarred man.

The morning of the eleventh was a different thing. I was still alive. I had been the best soldier I knew how to be and yet had never been killed. I had taken it for granted that no one could live through all the things that I had, yet never once had I done anything because I might get killed doing it. I was not suicidal, merely a defeated nobody without any attainable goal. I was numb. – GBB

I cannot be sure how long my grandfather lived in his “two worlds”—his soldier’s world and his civilian life, but as he started to remake his life in the 1920s, he began writing about the war that was shadowing him. He captured his wartime experiences both in prose and poetry. Even if he couldn’t name specific battle dates and places, his memories of those battles were vivid. Even if he didn’t know or recall the names of his comrades and the enemies he fought, their deaths haunted him. The war and its ghosts never left him, nor did his sadness and sense of utter futility at the needless loss of so many.

All those men killed. Our war ending and so many men killed. I was sick. I cannot list all the wars of the twentieth century, but when they do come to mind, I have the same sickness . . . – GBB

Now as we continue into the 21st century with tired, old conflicts and marches towards new wars, it is time . . . long past time . . . for my grandfather’s poems to be read for what they can tell us about the ways of war and for what they can show us about the soul of a soldier. To bring these poems into the light of day is my great honor; my hope is that we might learn something new from them.


– Donna Benedetti