For the week of Memorial Day.
This is a poem about the Battle of the Bulge.
The Battle
by Louis Simpson
Helmet and rifle, pack and overcoat
Marched through a forest. Somewhere up ahead
Guns thudded. Like the circle of a throat
The night on every side was turning red.
They halted and they dug. They sank like moles
Into the clammy earth between the trees.
And soon the sentries, standing in their holes,
Felt the first snow. Their feet began to freeze.
At dawn the first shell landed with a crack.
Then shells and bullets swept the icy woods.
This lasted many days. The snow was black.
The corpses stiffened in their scarlet hoods.
Most clearly of that battle I remember
The tiredness in eyes, how hands looked thin
Around a cigarette, and the bright ember
Would pulse with all the life there was within.
Quoting from Wikipedia:
"During World War II, from 1943 to 1945 Simpson served with the 101st Airborne Division. He fought in France, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Germany. His company was involved in a very bloody battle with German forces on the west bank of what is now the Carentan France Marina -- Simpson wrote his poem "Carentan O Carentan" about being ambushed there. In the Netherlands, he was involved in Market Garden and Opheusden fighting. At Veghel, his company suffered 21 killed in a brutal shelling while in the local church yard. At Bastogne, he and his fellow paratroopers endured bitterly cold temperatures while under siege by German forces."
Carentan O Carentan
Trees in the old days used to stand
And shape a shady lane
Where lovers wandered hand in hand
Who came from Carentan.
This was the shining green canal
Where we came two by two
Walking at combat-interval.
Such trees we never knew.
The day was early June, the ground
Was soft and bright with dew.
Far away the guns did sound,
But here the sky was blue.
The sky was blue, but there a smoke
Hung still above the sea
Where the ships together spoke
To towns we could not see.
Could you have seen us through a glass
You would have said a walk
Of farmers out to turn the grass,
Each with his own hay-fork.
The watchers in their leopard suits
Waited till it was time,
And aimed between the belt and boot
And let the barrel climb.
I must lie down at once, there is
A hammer at my knee.
And call it death or cowardice,
Don’t count again on me.
Everything’s all right, Mother,
Everyone gets the same
At one time or another.
It’s all in the game.
I never strolled, nor ever shall,
Down such a leafy lane.
I never drank in a canal,
Nor ever shall again.
There is a whistling in the leaves
And it is not the wind,
The twigs are falling from the knives
That cut men to the ground.
Tell me, Master-Sergeant,
The way to turn and shoot.
But the Sergeant’s silent
That taught me how to do it.
O Captain, show us quickly
Our place upon the map.
But the Captain’s sickly
And taking a long nap.
Lieutenant, what’s my duty,
My place in the platoon?
He too’s a sleeping beauty,
Charmed by that strange tune.
Carentan O Carentan
Before we met with you
We never yet had lost a man
Or known what death could do.
This poem is about what came to be known as the
battle of
Bloody Gulch. Carentan was a vital crossroads that separated the American landing zones at Utah Beach and Omaha Beach. Capturing the town and its canal system was essential for the Americans to merge their two beachheads into a single, continuous front and establish a secure defensive line. The approaches to Carentan led through marshy fields that could only be crossed by four bridges over the canal or across the
Barquette Lock. The Germans flooded the area, funneling the American troops onto these narrow passageways. On D-Day, June 6, 1944, the 101st's paratroopers seized the Lock and held it against German counter-attacks. Between June 10 and 15, the paratroopers engaged in brutal, house-to-house combat to push out the German 6th Parachute Regiment. All you Nazi lovers take note that
American paratroopers beat the kraut paratroopers.
