A Soldier's Poet: Woodbine Willie

POETRY CENTRAL  Volume 3, Number 1  ~ A Soldier's Poet:  Woodbine Willie~

You will not have heard of Geoffrey Anketell Studdert Kennedy, in all likelihood, but the stature and equal of this poet (and compassionate human being) has not been commonly seen in the modern literary era.  Here is a man that gave up a prominent position and path in the priesthood of the Anglican Church in pre-WWI England to join the chaplaincy and spend his days and nights in the dirt trenches of Europe communing and ministering to his soldiers under his oversight.  The effects stuck with him his entire life. 

A diminutive servant, Studdert Kennedy would have rather stuck it out with his troops in the ditches of western France during the havoc and bloodspill of the first world war, than to be any other place in the world.  And it was in those dank and dirty earthen tunnels that Studdert Kennedy formed a lasting bond and identification with his suffering soldiers;a bond that spilled over into a rich and powerful, if not lesser known, archive of poetry.

Studdert Kennedy (as he was called, with a dual last name) was an Anglican priest who studied for the priesthood at Ripon Clergy College at Oxford right before World War I.  After ministering in Rugby for a short time, he soon became frustrated with what he felt was an inconsistency between his position in the church and his personal views, expectations and vision for his ministry.  Concerning this dissonance, a friend and colleague said of Kennedy, “Once he told a pious congregation with a beautiful and ancient parish church that sometimes he felt he would like to take a great sledgehammer and smash every stained glass window in the church, and then go out and celebrate the Eucharist in a field with a tea-cup and plate.” 

After a period of soul-searching, Kennedy volunteered for the chaplaincy, and in 1914, was sent off to the Western Front in France.  There he spent his days in the trenches with his men, ministering to their needs, praying over their mutilated bodies, and all the while jotting down mental notes which later became the basis for an amazing and startling collection of poetry that would encourage generations of war survivors as well as families distraught after losing their loved ones in battle. 

Kennedy's first poems were written in some news letters for the military.  He was soon encouraged to compile them together into what became Rough Rhymes of a Padre, published by Cambridge University, in 1918.  The original version was a small pocket-sized collection for the soldiers, only 4 x 5 inches.  The poems of Studdert Kennedy tell of the bleakness of war, but also provide hope and intercession provided by faith, a trust in God that so vividly circumscribed his life and his actions.

In the foxholes and garrisons of the most brutal war mankind had ever seen, Kennedy walked among his men as a peer.  He soon was dubbed, Woodbine Willie by his comrades, after his habit of giving Woodbine cigarettes  to all those in his charge.  Here is a poem he wrote which depicts the poet’s humility and the depth of love for his men:

WOODBINE WILLIE

THEY gave me this name like their nature,

      Compacted of laughter and tears,

A sweet that was born of the bitter,

      A joke that was torn from the years.

Of their travail and torture, Christ's fools,

      Atoning my sins with their blood,

Who grinned in their agony sharing

      The glorious madness of God.

Their name! Let me hear it--the symbol

      Of unpaid--unpayable debt,

For the men to whom I owed God's Peace,

      I put off with a cigarette.  

This somewhat unorthodox approach soon cemented the relationship between chaplain and soldier.  His chaplain colleagues took note.  Kennedy advised a new priest, “Take a box of fags in your haversack and a great deal of love in your heart.” 

Kennedy loved his men, and he hated war.  The following poem shows it well:

                                                            WASTE

WASTE of Muscle, waste of Brain,

Waste of Patience, waste of Pain,

Waste of Manhood, waste of Health,

Waste of Beauty, waste of Wealth,

Waste of Blood, and waste of Tears,

Waste of Youth's most precious years,

Waste of ways the Saints have trod,

Waste of Glory, waste of God,--

                  War!

Studdert Kennedy suffered from severe asthma his entire life, but he continued to smoke with his men on the battlefileds of Europe in WWI.  He saw it as a way to identify with their plight. His poetry was honest and declarative, never covered with the sanguine misconceptions and arguments seen in the propaganda journals in favor of the glories and honor of war.  Not that he was subversive in any way; quite the contrary, but he saw firsthand as no other poet had seen before him, the horror and depravity of war.

As well, Studdert Kennedy was honest concerning his own wavering of faith.  And yet, in spite of the overwhelming evidence of evil in the world, he came down on the side of faith and hope, and verbalized a positive message in the face of despair and ineffable suffering.  He was a courageous man and won the Military Cross for his bravery under fire, although he never carried a weapon.  After the war, he was appointed as Royal Chaplain, in 1919. 

Kennedy continued to write poetry after his active duty.  Some of his poems focus on the dark side of war, and urge us to remember the ravages and unutterable suffering, so that future generations may think long and hard before moving into that kind of darkness.  Here is one that is especially haunting:

                                                IF YE FORGET

LET me forget--Let me forget,

I am weary of remembrance,

And my brow is ever wet,

With tears of my remembrance,

With the tears and bloody sweat,--

      Let me forget.

If ye forget--If ye forget,

Then your children must remember,

And their brow be ever wet,

With the tears of their remembrance,

With the tears and bloody sweat,--

      If ye forget.

The following short four-line poem is a striking verse that aptly illustrates the moment of dread every mother fears, in getting that horrible letter (in WWI often the deceased parents would have to be notified by a simple letter in the mail):

    A SCRAP OF PAPER

JUST a little scrap of paper

      In a yellow envelope,

And the whole world is a ruin,

          Even Hope.

Even more heart-shattering, is the following poem which tells of the ultimate sacrifice, a mother commending her son’s body to the Lord, with all the naked sadness and brutal reality of truth.  He is gone, yet there is purpose in it all. 

                                      A MOTHER UNDERSTANDS

DEAR Lord, I hold my hand to take

      Thy Body, broken here for me,

Accept the Sacrifice I make,

      My body, broken, there, for Thee.

His was my body, born of me,

      Born of my bitter travail pain,

And it lies broken on the field,

      Swept by the wind and the rain.

Kennedy died in 1929.  As his body was taken to buried, across the Mersey by ferry, a young man approached the coffin and laid a pack of Woodbines on top of the pine box.  Archbishop William Temple said of Kennedy, “he was the finest priest I’ve ever known.”  Kennedy wrote and published four volumes of poetry:

Rough Rhymes of a Padre. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1918.

        Cambridge University Library

More Rough Rhymes of a Padre. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1919.     

                  Cambridge University Library

           Sorrows Of God, and Other Poems. Privately Printed, 1924.

Rhymes. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1929. Cambridge University Library

All of Kennedy’s poems may be viewed by going to a wonderful website, The Unutterable Beauty, 

which features also features an exhaustive index (click here).

To close, here are two more poems by Studdert Kennedy.  The first one, entitled, The Spirit, is written in

simple, unadorned language, and one gets the sense that the author is speaking directly to a soldier, face

to face, as if an ear, or gently, beside a bed.

                                                THE SPIRIT

              When there ain't no gal to kiss you,

              And the postman seems to miss you,

              And the fags have skipped an issue,

                        Carry on.

             When ye've got an empty belly,

              And the bulley's rotten smelly,

              And you're shivering like a jelly,

                        Carry on.

            When the Boche has done your chum in,

            And the sergeant's done the rum in,

            And there ain't no rations comin',

                      Carry on.

            When the world is red and reeking,

            And the shrapnel shells are shrieking,

            And your blood is slowly leaking,

                      Carry on.

            When the broken battered trenches,

            Are like the bloody butchers' benches,

            And the air is thick with stenches,

                      Carry on.

            Carry on,

                Though your pals are pale and wan,

                And the hope of life is gone,

                           Carry on.

                For to do more than you can,

                Is to be a British man,

                Not a rotten "also ran,"

                           Carry on.

The last poem needs no introduction.

                        WAR

       There's a soul in the Eternal,

       Standing stiff before the King.

       There's a little English maiden

              Sorrowing.

       There's a proud and tearless woman,

       Seeing pictures in the fire.

       There's a broken battered body

              On the wire.

Bibliography and Sources

Representative Poetry Online (RPO) Dept. of English, University of Toronto

The Unutterable Beauty, The Collected Poetry of G. A. STUDDERT KENNEDY,

Hodder and Stoughton, London (online listing of Kennedy’s poetry)

Spartacus Educational (online information source)

Wikipedia  

Special acknowledgment to James F. Clifton, Studdert Kennedy enthusiast,  who has some of the original editions of Studdert Kennedy's work, volumes which he cherishes.

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Written by Edward Nudelman, Books Correspondent for POETRY CENTRAL

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