War is so traumatic psychologically that many returned soldiers will not discuss it, ever. This has major implications for their wellbeing. WW1 and WW2 Veterans at least had an RSL or similar to join, but in this country, the Vietnam Veterans were vilified, spat on when they returned, and consequently won’t tell their stories to anyone. This is surely why more Viet Vets have suicided since 1973 than were actually killed in Vietnam (Australia lost 450 troops in action, and by the early nineties had lost more than double this figure to psychiatric illness, including drug and alcohol abuse). Poetry is one of the few mediums in which some people can express their terrible and conflicting memories of the past.

John McCrae

This Professor of Medicine from Montreal was a colonel at the second battle for Ypres in 1915. After a friend was blown to pieces he wrote the war’s most famous poem, which begins ‘In Flander’s Fields the poppies blow/ Between the crosses, row on row/…’. This is the source of the red poppies worn each Armistice Day: the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month.

I wonder how many died to allow the war to end at such a neat time? If you ever get to Belgium, consider a trip to Ypres. Here you will find one of the first war museums in the world to acknowledge the participation of women in the work of war, as well as in its suffering.

John Millet

John Millet is a retired Australian lawyer who flew in the bombers over Germany towards the end of WW2. The impact on him is still working its way out in fine poetry: here are two poems in greatly contrasting styles from ‘View from the Turret’ (Five Islands Press Associates, 1994).

The Cry

“Where is my Mother?”

the answer- “Dead.”

“Where is my brother?”

the answer- “Dead.”

“Where is my sister, my wife, my lover?”

“Dead. Dead. Dead.

They are all dead.”

The X

July 1943:Hamburg bombed- 50,000 killed,

40,000 injured, 1,000,000 de-housed.

Allied Aircrew casualties, 1,000 killed-

86 bombers destroyed.

They come out of the penniless black skirts of the night sky-

Lancasters, high above Hamburg, looped together by search-

lights, tracers, throttles full bore. The city drowns under yellow

waters of incendiaries and high explosives. Big bombs distend

their bellies, blow out their loud bloomers, their hoops, inflate

their fat arses, fart into the thick soup of the streets,

broadcast their stench, adding their poisonous bulbs.

Squadron after squadron hangs over the “X” marked by the

Pathfinders, to lay hideous eggs- turn back into the ragged

night. Some, crippled, fall into the dead earth forever. Some are

followed by Focke-Wulfs. Messerschmitts pull others out of the

sky, break, stretch them, skin and bone them, send them to wreck.

Some fall into the torn wet shirt of the North Sea where the slow

maul and thrust of tides cancels their rot and stone weights of

war hold them under-and there they wait without knowing they

wait for anything. Others return to honeyed bases carrying

Aircrew wounded beyond repair.

Aircraft ‘L for Love”, coned by searchlights, drops its big,

ugly, lovely, crapped missiles. Then in the spinningtop Ack-ack

fire is hit and Air Gunner Ack-R Simpson hammerlocked by G

forces. “L” drops into “Fairytown” 15,000 feet below and Ack-R,

released, parachutes down into peacock tails of fire, hulls of

Lancasters nuzzling the sky next to him.

Held by the safe silk in air cold as a bathroom he watches

the calm cloud-owls drift through shellbursts, past

searchlight needles. he remembers the rocking-chair arms of an

old song: “Sleep pretty baby. Granny will sing you away.”

He wants to stay between friend and enemy at 10,000 feet, and not go

down into the wrecked streets below, where the widows of

Hamburg will find him- in the rubble of broken buildings- in

drains and waterpipes and sewers- on their doorsteps and

window ledges- sheltering under crumpled roofs- in ribcages of

dead children- in the cages of dead birds- in the kennels of dead

dogs. their hatred will duel with him, cut his face, parry and

thrust, scar him.

They will touch his eyes, his throat, his genitals, his anus hot

from the huge crap of the bombs dropped on them- bombs

spurting from his intestines- grief in their streets- blood on the

corso. He will break on their doorsteps- cracked open like a box

of dice. Thrown at will, he will come up snake-eyes. The compass

of their hatred will search him out, find him, punish him.

“As I spider down to the fire bombings

those women of Hamburg wait for me and one

more burning than the rest

will reach through my cheek with her claw,

her beak pierce my stomach, claw

scratch through my bladder, beak

fall again and again. She will rise,

offal in her teeth trailing behind her

like aerials- my 19 years of innocence.”

Dense smoke, oxides, poisons, fat smells, burning bones, the

earth thrown at him. Distraught mudcovered women the owls

have mauled, the “X” in their eyes, wait for his touch on the

ground next to them. He tries to go back into the black vats of the

nightsky, climb the wind like a grandmother’s knee, return to a

time full of magic and ice cream.

These women are broken sticks and their skirts are burning, near

burst water mains. Burst jugulars bleed into the earth- aneurisms

smear Hamburg with blood- blood on the earth.

He is falling into the stick arms of the women, the axe-arms, the

pitchfork arms, the barb’-wire arms, the kitchen-knife arms, arms

made of anything a weapon is, blade, bone and pencil, arms

made for babies and men- that will pull him from the sky, cut off

his hands, excise his testicles, drain his blood, throw him to the

fires and wrecked walls.

In their eyes only the language of death, and he, an image

trapped in all broken cities, will hang, always just beyond

reach, as if he hangs on a gallow’s arm over a trapdoor- always

just ready to open- never sprung- the strangling cord never

tightened, but always ready.

He will live there with what will never be answered.

Consider: Australia fought in WW2, and welcomed (those were the days) the traumatised refugees of Europe in great numbers afterwards. Hence there is a large cohort, that you will encounter clinically, of those elderly who suffered in various ways. Can you think of a medical condition that can in no way be associated with psychological trauma?

RC Potter

Private RC Potter fought in WW1, the Great War. In his diaries he remembered first marching up to the front, to the battle of Pozieres. They marched past a huge shell crater, beside which was an army boot with a shattered tibia still laced in. Here is a segment of “Pozieres”

(…)

Torn, twisted, upturned earth,

High crests and sunken craters,

Gigantic shells of Hellish birth,

Grim death’s unwearying waiters.

About, mounds on every side-

They mark colossal losses

And humbly plead for those who died,

Those crude, frail, falling crosses.

And here and there a gaping skull,

Some shreds of soldiers clothing,

a booted bone, makes one’s heart full

Of sadness and of loathing.

(…)

And here at last the victims slain

May sleep among the roses

When nature’s hand removes the stain

The breast of France discloses.

In the rhyme scheme, and the sentiment expressed at the end of the poem (including the European roses) and the capitalisation of the beginning of each line, Potter is technically a conventional poet, and could never reach the heights of Wilfred Owen, for example. However, this matters little to me: the whole poem is a very moving piece of poetry, and I admire Potter even more for the fact that this was written in the trenches in 1917.

Potter’s book is called Past Hell’s Portals and is available from Ginninderra Press in Canberra. Those of you who make it to Bega may encounter his granddaughter: a radiographer here.

Consider: Poetry poured out of people’s hearts when the World Trade Centre was demolished in 2001. A phenomenal wave of poetry swept the world. Guess which country is now a great source?

Evil doctors in war

Arguably the doctor closest to evil in recent history was Josef Mengele, an ambitious scion of Hitler who performed many ghastly experiments on the mentally and physically deficient, the Socialists , the Gypsies and the Jews in particular, during WW2. This poem from Australia in 2004 illustrates the revulsion this man’s work can easily elicit, sixty years later.

Dr Mengele is IN

He is always smiling as

he climbs the metal stairs

to the experimental wing.

Awaiting him, the neat rows

of instruments beckon under

the arc lights. Today should

provide excellent results.

The condition of two sisters

sewn together last week.

The progress of those left

in the ice tanks overnight.

He has a productive day,

leaves promptly at six,

dispensing his standard

command to the orderlies.

Of the women who live,

put the younger ones aside.

The Kapos can have them

until they are finished.

But ensure they are back

in their cells, conscious,

by 0900 hours.

(by Ian McBryde)

References and further reading

McBryde I (2004) Domain Five Islands Press

Lifton R (1986/2000) The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide Basic Books

Potter R C ( ) Past Hells Portals Ginninderrra

*Metcalf T (2003) Into the No Zone Ginninderra

updated: 22/03/2010