Newfolk NDF: The Work of Soldier Poetry in Kansas, 1917-1919
New Directions in Folklore 7 2003
Newfolk :: NDF :: Archive :: Issue 7
The Work of Soldier Poetry in Kansas, 1917-1919
Timothy D. Rives
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
Newfolk NDF: The Work of Soldier Poetry in Kansas, 1917-1919
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)
"Army Slang" taught Regular Army jargon to new soldier folk. Learning the recondite
language began the necessary differentiation of the soldier from his civilian identity.
But who was he, and where would he fit in the new world of Army and war?
Conscripts
Although the volunteer soldier loomed as a masculine ideal in the pantheon of
American heroes, US war planners designed a force composed largely of conscripts
to make the world safe for democracy. Conscripted men accounted for almost 75
percent of what would become known as the American Expeditionary Force
(Sandels 1983: 70-72; Official Record n.d.:12 13). Camp Funston poets defined and
defended this new soldier type, mediating the distinctions of duty, honor, and
manhood believed to separate Regular Army volunteers from draftees. In "Drafted,"
Private "A" asks:
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.
Newfolk NDF: The Work of Soldier Poetry in Kansas, 1917-1919
..............................................
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...
But is he? "A" leaves readers wondering if he really believes it. The shame question
lingers. Reluctant soldier suggests reluctant man. Perhaps this is why he didn't write
his real name at the top or bottom of the poem. His anonymity, coupled with the
lumping of his drafted status with the "disabled," (the "lad who may be lame" or the
"boy who couldn't hear. Or see to sight a gun.") is revealing. "A" fears history will
judge him as less than a complete man. He knows his ultimate redemption lies on
the battlefield- or at least in his willingness to sacrifice his life there. He swears:
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)
Newfolk NDF: The Work of Soldier Poetry in Kansas, 1917-1919
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 tradeThey 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
Newfolk NDF: The Work of Soldier Poetry in Kansas, 1917-1919
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 bruntBut 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
Newfolk NDF: The Work of Soldier Poetry in Kansas, 1917-1919
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.
Newfolk NDF: The Work of Soldier Poetry in Kansas, 1917-1919
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 dayto-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
Newfolk NDF: The Work of Soldier Poetry in Kansas, 1917-1919
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, 18991902 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978), 96-119, 155201; 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.
Newfolk NDF: The Work of Soldier Poetry in Kansas, 1917-1919
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
Newfolk NDF: Timothy D. Rives
New Directions in Folklore
Newfolk :: NDF :: Archive
Timothy D. Rives
Tim Rives served with the Regular Army from 1987 to 1992 in a variety of
signals intelligence and public affairs assignments. He is a graduate of the
Defense Language Institute (Korean), the Defense Information School
(photojournalist), and is a member of the Veterans of Foreign Wars. He has
a Masters degree in American History from Emporia [KS] State University,
1995 and is an archives specialist with the National Archives and Records
Administration-Central Plains Region (Kansas City, Missouri).
Bibliography
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Newfolk :: NDF :: Archive