The First World War evoked a colossal poetic response. Historian Keith Robbins estimates that more than a million and a half poems were written in August 1914 alone (Giddings 1988:8). That is, 50,000 poems a day for the first three weeks of the war. Anthologized by September, parodied by November, even banned by 1916 in some quarters, war poetry nevertheless continued its extravagant flow from the pens of Great War participants (Hynes 1991:28-30). When the United States entered the war in April 1917, the poetry factory remained in production, the muse in high gear. Filling a weekly column called the "Poet's Corner," Stars and Stripes newspaper printed more than 100,000 lines of soldier verse in less than two years. "All of [the American Expeditionary Force] read poetry," a staff writer said, and "most of them wrote it" (Yanks: A.E.F Verse 1920:v).

American soldiers of the Great War were well prepared to versify experience. They had grown up in an age when it was difficult to find a newspaper that did not contain poems documenting the death of a beloved pet, the laying of a church cornerstone, or the gallantry of grandpa's comrades at Gettysburg. When they were boys, if something sad, important, or fantastic happened, they were sure to read about it in rhyme.

Teachers encouraged them to read, memorize, and recite poetry. Rudyard Kipling and Robert Service were schoolboy (and later, training camp) favorites. Their influence gave the imagination of these writers a decidedly military predisposition, a martial slant. Together, newspapers and schools had primed the Great War poetry cannon years before it was fired.

Like the local poetry that nurtured them, American soldier poets won few critical hearts or minds. But the critics, the literary critics anyway, missed the point. Soldier poets seldom pretended to artistic effect, but rather aimed for practical, even political, effects. Soldier poetry abounded because it "worked" in this practical sense. Deftly protean, soldier poetry transmitted occupational lore and language, constructed, defined, and redefined collective and gender identities, revised history, and relayed important messages to key audiences.

This paper investigates the work of soldier poetry in Kansas during the First World War. Most of the poems examined here appeared in Trench and Camp, a newspaper contributed to by soldiers training at Camp Funston, Kansas. The other poem was found in a personal letter.

Background

One of 16 National Army cantonments built for the war, Camp Funston, located adjacent to Fort Riley, Kansas, processed and trained more than 50,000 men for military service in 1917 and 1918 (Bristow 1996:236). A folk culture based on unique group experiences, uniform appearances, shared attitudes, and collective expectations quickly formed. Soldier poets emerged to render intelligible the exceptional events shaping the men of Funston. Like other writers in the "local poet tradition," these men compressed important social and occupational lessons into verse form, transmitting them quickly and succinctly to their fellow soldiers.¹ " Army Slang," by Corporal J.J. Harris, is an example of the simple and efficient style of the military folk poet. Harris writes:

A lieutenant new is a "shave-tail."
"On the carpet" means a trial:
"Sawbones" are the doctors,
The "Rookies" make us smile.
"Flimsies" they are orders:
Some dishes are called "ducks,"
A "Hard-Guy" is a tough one:
"Slick-back" a horse that bucks.
Then we have the "lighting tapers,"
And you know the "leather leg,"
Who is nothing but an officer.
"Hen-fruit" is just an egg... (1917:1)

Conscripts

A drafted man? Why sure I am
You've got me, that's my case:
Brought in to fight by Uncle Sam,
Say whataya mean -- disgrace?
..............................................
I could've enlisted, sure enough:
For that I've no excuse.
But leaving home's a little tough,
When you don't see the use;
It wasn't that I lacked the nerve,
Or love for that old gun.
Sure I know a guy could never serve
A more distinguished one...(1918:4)

The poem documents A's ideological indoctrination, and his transformation from reluctant civilian to steel-flashing infantryman. He thanks President Wilson for convincing him to support the war. As his understanding of the war's righteousness and the administration's competence and expertise grows, so does his faith in the ability of "less than ideal" soldier types to contribute to the effort:

Now take a lad who maybe lame,
He couldn't run 'em down.
But push a pencil just the same
As any buck in town.
Or maybe some boy couldn't hear.
Or see to sight a gun,
But in raising corn and wheat each year,
Knock [hell] out of the Hun.
..............................................
Again I ask, is it a shame
That I was passed and took?
No, boy, I'm glad you'll find my name
On the draft list when you look...

And the regulars will hit 'em hard,
They'll have "Old Bill"[Kaiser Wilhelm] a cryin.'
And so will we, their drafted pard,
Or by gum die a tryin.'

"Drafted" works to expand the soldier ideal, redefining it to include the loyal conscript (and other "disabled" types), a man as willing to sacrifice himself as the archetypal volunteer, and every inch the Man.

The Gender Crisis of the Stateside Soldier

But what happens to the sacrificial soldier ideal, volunteer or drafted, when the battlefield gate fails to open in mortal embrace? What happens to the man never given the chance to offer himself up and definitively prove his manhood? The questions unveil the deepest desires of men deathly anxious over their masculine authenticity and identity.

The logic of total war intensified the battlefield-manhood nexus. "Once a modern nation declares war- total war" writes Samuel Hynes, "the war becomes the only reality, and the only motive for action" (Hynes 1997:50). The First World War totalized society in the sense that every aspect of culture- including love, labor, and custom- was geared to the war effort. Total war "totalized" gender roles, too. Men must act like "men." Women must act like "women." Men fight wars. Women tend home fires. Men removed from the reality of the European battlefield were not, by this severe reasoning, real men.

By the summer of 1918, soldiers still marking time at Funston realized that the war would likely end before they got the chance to confirm their manhood in the real world of combat. The prospective debasement of their status from "Soldier" to "Soldier Who Missed the War" represented, in their eyes, a descent into effeminacy and puerility.

As the "The Doughboy's Ladies Magazines" by Private Willard Wattles shows, soldiers who once took their orders from the "Infantry Drill of Regulations" were now better served by women and children's magazines. Wattles writes:

The sergeant stopped to masticate a chew of navy plug:
"We'll use that 'House and Garden' when we buy the parlor rug.
An' when that Denver rookie starts to wash his overalls
He can get some nice suggestions by readin' in McCall's."
..........................................................................................
The sergeant shook two loaded dice, and drew another card.
"I learned this game of checkers from the Youth's Companion, pard:
An' when I start to throw a bridge across a boilin' canyon
I'll read up that new tatting stitch in the Woman's Home Companion." (1918a:3)

By the fall of 1918, it was painfully clear the war would end soon, along with the hopes of the Funston-bound Doughboys. Three new poems appeared around this time to mediate the "failure" of the soldier who missed service in France, to defend his military and masculine identities. These poems are "The Depot Brigade," by Wattles (1918b:2), "Camp Funston Boys," by Sergeant Frederick Starr (1918:3), and "Interned," by Major G.W. Polhemus (1918:3).

Wattles, a middle class conscript, was an English instructor at the University of Kansas in civilian life. In "Depot Brigade," he adopts the demotic "Tommy" voice popularized by Kipling and countless imitators to explain his plight:

I went to join the army, I thought 'twas mighty fine
To be a gory hero in the very front line,
To Mess around with hand grenades-would be amazing fun
To jab a hungry bayonet into a howling Hun.
To get my right arm shot in two and lose my eagle eye
And hang my spinal column on the barbed wire fence to dry. (Wattles: 1918b:2)

So far, so good, but the reality of training camp sets in soon.

And so I came to Funston,- the weather went to zero,
And underneath the shower-bath, I hardly looked a hero.
They stuck me in the kitchen, I mounted guard all night,
And I was such an Ichabod my clothes they looked a fright.
..........................................................................................
They bawled me out at reveille, they nagged me at retreat.
They made remarks I really think I'd better not repeat.
But worst of all their insults- alas, the sorry trade-
They turned at east and stuck me in the Depot Brigade.

Wattles knows well the social meaning of his stateside service.

Now all the friends I ever had are fighting Huns in France.
They've raised Old Glory to the winds in Pershing's great advance.
They've died in German dugouts, they've given lives to save
Some other wounded fellow from a muddy Flanders grave.
....................................................................................
But here I am in Funston- God knows how long I'll stay,
I search the printed list of dead with growing dread each day.
For when the war is over and all of history made,
They'll say, "He stayed in Funston in the Depot Brigade."

For Sergeant Frederick Starr, an African American soldier, the war represented the chance to show what "these boys of my race" could do, an echo of the larger black hopes of trading wartime loyalty and battlefield bravura for postwar social gains. In "Camp Funston Boys," Starr writes:

We soldier boys of Camp Funston,
Are very sad to say
We haven't been to Paris, France,
But we were on our way.

When we were billed out that Tuesday
We boys sure stepped around
Laboring under the strong impression
We would soon be in a foreign town.

But as the Yanks were fighting
With such animosity and skill
They held us here in Funston
To continue on the hill.

I know had we been there,
These boys of my race
We would have eaglerocked right over the top
Staring the Germans in the face. ............................................................................
We are aware of the fact and you are too,
We missed the trip that we was due.
But who knows only time will tell,
We may view that country and view it well...(Starr: 1918:3)

Starr's assertion of his rights ("we missed the trip that we was due") and his frequent use of the historically- inscribed and minimizing "boys" distinguish his from the poetry of white soldiers. But it is a difference in degree, not kind. Starr pined as deeply for the chance to prove himself in the "real" world of combat as any of his versifying European descendant counterparts.

Turning Private A's "Drafted" on its head, Major G.W. Polhemus, avers that the masculine prerogatives of combat service should be awarded to those who volunteered for duty. He writes in "Interned":

There are thousands of men in the A.E.F.
Who did not volunteer,
And plenty more will going o'er
Who'd just as Hef stay here.
The most unfortunate man today
Is the fellow who came to the front
And offered his all at his country's call
And was ready to bear the brunt-
But was cast aside and assigned elsewhere
To Replacements or Depot Brigade
..........................................................................
Now last year they told him that they had to hold him
On this side with other good men
To train new recruits in making salutes
Yet again and again and againŠ

Polhemus never escaped Funston. He "lived" to write, utterly without irony:

The unlucky ones in this great world war
Are not the men who are killed.
Nor the wounded ones, be they allies or Huns,
No matter what blood they have spilled.
The most unfortunate man today
Is the man who jumped at the chance
To fight like [hell] from the tap of the bell,
But who'll never see service in France. (1918:3)

Despite the military, social, and racial differences separating Polhemus, Starr, and Wattles, their work illustrates the power of soldier poets to discern and articulate the gender-related anxieties of the greater camp community. For in each case the message of the stateside soldier poet is the same, and it is this: "Don't blame me. I wanted to go. Don't think me less the man."

The Spanish Influenza Saves the Day

Denied the chance to prove themselves overseas, stateside soldiers would have to find a way to do it in Kansas. So while the 1918 Spanish Influenza epidemic was a tragedy that killed more than a half million Americans, it must have hit Camp Funston like a breath of fresh air. For in the flu men "interned" in Kansas found, if not a "disputed barricade," at least a "rendezvous with death." (Seeger: 1917:40-41).

It was indeed a deadly scene. The flu killed 958 men at Camp Funston in October 1918 alone (Johnson 1992:48). Cantonment poets were soon commemorating their "war dead" in verse. In "Honored," Lieutenant Joseph R. Hood imagines an egalitarian Valhalla where deceased stateside soldiers stricken by the epidemic joined the heavenly ranks of the combat slain. Hood writes:

He did not fall where battle's din
Was hideous in its roar:
The havoc and the rushing in
Were not part of his war.

A foe more cruel than bursting shell,
More sure, his way beset:
He fought the monster back to hell
And lost, it seems, but yet.

The fearlessness that marked his end,
The courage on his brow:
No greater hero could attend,
No cross could quite endow.

And those who rose from trenches red,
Who knew their pain and woe
Have hailed him, comrade of their dead,
He shares their joy, we know Š (1918:4)

Hood redefines and relocates the battlefield, with its attendant horrors and honors, to the Kansas hills. The flu death he celebrates in "Honored" is the moral and masculine equivalent of any that transpired on other "battlefields." Perhaps it is even greater.

And Flanders Field, its poppies gay,
Its crosses row on row:
Could hardly such a debt repay
Nor greater honor know.

A Soldier Poem at Work

While the social career of the Trench and Camp verse is undocumented, the circulation of the poem "To the Stay at Homes" does provide an illustration of soldier poetry doing its "work" in a broader context. The poem was discovered in a letter written by a Kansas soldier stationed near the Panama Canal to his parents. "Dear folks," the letter begins,

My bunkie got a poem from home in a paper. It was wrote by a boy in France. It's pretty good and I'm afraid the shoes fit some around home. I'll copy it and send it to youŠ. You can put this poem in the paper if you want toŠby the way, I didn't write it, don't put this letter in though (Garwood,1919).

"To the Stay at Homes" traveled from France to the home of the soldier's "bunkie" in Galesburg, Kansas, to the Panama Canal Zone, and on to Wakarusa, Kansas, the home of his parents. It probably appeared in at least three printed versions -- military newspaper, civilian newspaper, and private letters. An outline of the peripatetic poem scrawled on the back of the envelope that contained the letter suggests that it was transmitted informally, perhaps orally, from one soldier to another, or untold others.

The verse fits with the theme of masculine identity that so frequently occupied non-battlefield soldier poetry. The chivalrous "roughneck" soldier who accepted his (and other's) responsibility to avenge the mistreated women of Belgium is contrasted with the epicene slacker who dodged military service to stay home with his mother and sweetheart. The anonymous soldier poet writes:

You say he can't stand the Army,
The life is too rough for him.
Do you think he is any better
Than some other mother's Tom or Jim?
................................................
You say his girl could not stand it,
To send him off with the rest.
Don't you think she'd be glad he enlisted,
When she felt a German's hot breath on her breast?...

The writer also directs fire at the parents of the "darling who sits in the parlor/ and lets another man fight in his place." The poem thus honors both the soldiers (volunteer and conscript) and their families. It also shows how completely the rigid gender imperatives of total war culture had permeated even the remote corners of the country. "To the Stay at Homes" also appealed to those soldiers who "failed" to see service in France as it recognized their membership among the "roughneck" class.

To his great disappointment, Private Harold P. Garwood, author of the letter quoted above and the poem's re-transmitter in this case, spent the entire war in Panama, where he was as far from the action in France as were his parents on their Kansas farm. But Garwood had no difficulty identifying with combat soldiers, nor with suggesting to the local paper that he wrote the poem. Lastly, Garwood's use of "To the Stay at Homes" was pointedly political in its intent to shame those back home in Wakarusa whom he suspected the slacker shoes fit.

Conclusion

Garwood's political use of "his" poem foreshadowed the coming struggle for male status in the post-total war world. It pointed to the impending aftermath of war with its inevitable awarding of status, honor, and image, not to mention the day-to-day comparison of wartime adventure at the water cooler, on the factory line, in the shop, and all the places where men really live. The reading, writing, and circulation of non-combat soldier poetry were important weapons in what might be described as the intramural politics of manhood: What did you do during the war, pal?

Soldier poetry helped rationalize and validate the service of the men who "failed" to see action in France. Kansas soldiers who missed the European war read and wrote it to expiate their putative shortcomings as men and warriors and construct an alternate history of honor and sacrifice.

NOTES

1. For more on the "local poet tradition," see Mary Ellen Brown, "The Forgotten Makars: The Scottish Local Poet Tradition," Creativity and Tradition in Folklore: New Directions, ed. Simon Bronner (Logan Utah: Utah State University Press, 1992), 251; T.M. Pearce, "What is a Folk Poet?" Western Folklore 12 (1953): 248. Some outstanding examples of soldier poetry scholarship include Les Cleveland, Dark Laughter: War in Song and Popular Culture (Westport, Connecticut: Praeger, 1994); Simon Featherstone, War Poetry: An Introductory Reader (London: Routlege, 1995), 39-42; Martin Stephen, The Price of Pity: Poetry, History and Myth in the Great War (London: Leo Cooper, 1996), 124-136; M. Van Wyk Smith, Drummer Hodge: The Poetry of the Anglo-Boer War, 1899-1902 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978), 96-119, 155-201; An important scholar who treats this "minor verse" with the respect it deserves is Mark W. Van Wienen, Partisans and Poets: The Political Work of American Poetry in the Great War (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997). A fruitful use of soldier poetry as historical artifact is found in J.G. Fuller's Troop Morale and Popular Culture in the British and Dominion Armies, 1914-1918 (London: Oxford University Press, 1991).

WORKS CITED

Bristow, Nancy K. Making Men Moral: Social Engineering During the Great War. The American Social Experience Series. New York: New York University Press, 1996.

Brown, Mary Ellen. "The Forgotten Makars: The Scottish Local Poet Tradition." Creativity and Tradition in Folklore: New Directions. Ed. Simon Bronner. Logan, Utah: Utah State University Press, 1992.

Cleveland, Les. Dark Laughter: War in Song and Popular Culture. Westport, Connecticut: Praeger, 1994.

Featherstone, Simon. War Poetry: An Introductory Reader. London: Routlege, 1995.

Fuller, J.G. Troop Morale and Popular Culture in the British and Dominion Armies, 1914-1918. London: Oxford University Press, 1991.

Garwood, Harold P. Letter to Mrs. R.C. Garwood. 23 March 1919. Manuscripts Collection. Kansas State Historical Society. Topeka.

Giddings, Robert. The War Poets: The Lives and Writings of Rupert Brooke, Robert Graves, Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon, Edmund Blunden, and the Other Great Poets of the 1914-1918 War. New York: Orion Book, 1988.

Harris, Corporal J.J. "Army Slang." Trench and Camp 8 December 1917, 1.

Hood, First Lieutenant Joseph R. "Honored." Trench and Camp 16 November 1918, 4.

Hynes, Samuel. A War Imagined: The First World War and English Culture. New York: Atheneum, 1991.

Hynes, Samuel. The Soldier's Tale: Bearing Witness to Modern War. New York: Penguin Books, 1997.

Johnson, Judith R. "Kansas in the 'Grippe': The Spanish Influenza Epidemic of 1918." Kansas History 15 (1992): 44-55.

The Official Record of the United States' Part in the Great War. Washington, DC: US Government, n.d.

Pearce, T.M. "What is a Folk Poet?" Western Folklore 12 (1953): 242-248.

Polhemus, Major G.W. "Interned." Trench and Camp 30 November 1918, 3.

Private "A". "Drafted." Trench and Camp 2 March 1918, 4.

Sandels, Robert. "The Doughboy: Formation of a Military Folk." American Studies 24 (1983): 69-88.

Seeger, Alan. "I Have a Rendezvous with Death." A Book of Verse of the Great War. Ed. Reginald Wheeler. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1917.

Service With Fighting Men: An Account of the Work of the American Young Men's Christian Association in the World War. New York: Association Press, 1922.

Smith, M. Van Wyk. Drummer Hodge: The Poetry of the Anglo-Boer War, 1899-1902. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978.

Starr, Sergeant Frederick. "Camp Funston Boys." Trench and Camp 30 November 1918, 3.

Stephen, Martin. The Price of Pity: Poetry, History and Myth in the Great War. London: Leo Cooper, 1996.

Van Wienen, Mark W. Partisans and Poets: The Political Work of American Poetry in the Great War. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997.

Wattles, Private Willard. "The Doughboy's Ladies Magazines." Trench and Camp 27 July 1918a, 3.

________. "The Depot Brigade." Trench and Camp 28 September 1918b, 2.

Yanks: A.E.F. Verse. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1920.

Newfolk :: NDF :: Archive :: Issue 7