Tommy Rot Wwi Poetry They Didnt Let You Read John Sadler Rosie Serdiville by John Sadler, Rosie Serdiville 9780752492087, 075249208X instant download after payment.

A poem:
"General Shute." The General inspecting the trenches, exclaimed with a
horrified shout, 'I refuse to command a Division, Which leaves its
excreta about.', But nobody took any notice, No one was prepared to
refute, That the presence of shit was congenial, compared to the
presence of Shute, And certain responsible critics, Made haste to reply
to his words, Observing that his staff advisors, consisted entirely of
turds. For shit may be shot at odd corners and paper supplied there to
suit, But a shit would be shot without mourners, If somebody shot that
shit Shute.
The Great War 1914−1918 was dubbed the ‘war to end all wars’ and introduced the full flowering of industrial warfare to the world. The huge enthusiasm which had greeted the outbreak of hostilities in August 1914 soon gave way to a grim resignation and, as the Western Front became a long, agonising battle of dire attrition, revulsion. Never before had England’s sons and daughters poured out their lifeblood in such prolonged and seemingly incessant slaughter.The conflict produced a large corpus of war poetry, though focus to date has rested with the ‘big’ names − Brooke, Sassoon, Graves, Owen, Rosenberg and Blunden et al – with their descent from youthful enthusiasm to black cynicism held as a mirror of the nation’s journey. Their fame is richly merited, but there are others that, until now, you would not expect to find in any Great War anthology. This is ‘Tommy’ verse, mainly written by other ranks and not, as is generally the case with the more famous war poets, by officers. It is, much of it, doggerel, loaded with lavatorial humour. Much of the earlier material is as patriotic and sentimental as the times, jingoistic and occasionally mawkish. However, the majority of the poems in this collection have never appeared in print before; they have been unearthed in archives, private collections and papers. Their authors had few pretences, did not see themselves as poets, nor were writing for fame and posterity. Nonetheless, these lost voices of the Great War have a raw immediacy, and an instant connection that the reader will find compelling.