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War and the Muses - Joyce Kilmer’s "Rouge Boquet"
At 1520 Hours on March 7, 1918, while the 2nd Battalion of the 165th Infantry – New York’s “Fighting 69th” – was on the line in the Rouge Boquet Chausailles sector, it was subject to a very heavy German bombardment. In the course of the shelling, a dugout collapsed, burying two dozen men from Company E.
Under heavy fire, the battalion commander, Major William Donovan, led rescuers who pulled two men from the rubble and mud, as well as five bodies. The voices of other survivors could be heard buried somewhere under the rubble, and the men kept digging for hours. But as the darkness fell, the danger from mud slides and continuing German shelling forced the rescue to be called off. A total of fifteen men were missing, buried beneath the rubble and mud.
Father Francis P. Duffy, the regimental chaplain, who had taken part in the rescue effort, pronounced the Last Rites over the site. A few days later Joyce Kilmer, a sergeant and moderately successful poet who had also had a hand in the rescue attempt, wrote a poem commemorating his comrades.
Father Duffy gave the poem its first public reading at a memorial service for the fallen on Saint Patrick’s Day.
Rouge Bouquet
In a wood they call Rouge Bouquet
There is a new-made grave today,
Built by never a spade nor pick
Yet covered with earth 10 meters thick.
There lie many fighting men,
Dead in their youthful prime,
Never to laugh nor love again
Nor taste the Summertime.
For Death came flying through the air
And stopped his flight at the dugout stair,
Touched his prey and left them there,
Clay to clay.
He hid their bodies stealthily
In the soil of the land they fought to free
And fled away.
Now over the grave abrupt and clear
Three volleys ring;
And perhaps their brave young spirits hear
The bugles sing:
"Go to sleep!
Go to sleep!
Slumber well where the shell screamed and fell.
Let your rifles rest on the muddy floor,
You will not need them any more.
Danger's past;
Now at last,
Go to sleep!"
There is on earth no worthier grave
To hold the bodies of the brave
Than this place of pain and pride
Where they nobly fought and nobly died.
Never fear but in the skies
Saints and angels stand
Smiling with their holy eyes
On this new-come band.
St. Michael's sword darts through the air
and touches the aureole on his hair
As he sees them stand saluting there,
His stalwart sons:
And Patrick, Brigid, Columkill
Rejoice that in veins of warriors still
The Gael's blood runs.
And up to Heaven's doorway floats,
From the wood called Rouge Bouquet,
A delicate cloud of bugle notes
That softly say:
"Farewell!
Farewell!
Comrades true, born anew, peace to you!
Your souls shall be where the heroes are
And your memory shine like the morning-star.
Brave and dear,
Shield us here.
Farewell!"
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