16th January 2012

Having seen the film War Horse with the family at the weekend I remembered this piece which I wrote for my Grandfather Frank Oswald Wilde who served as a farrier in 1914 - 18 until he was gassed and returned home.

1914

(i)

My name is Frank Oswald Wilde, farrier at Mossley Pit. 

Each day I made my way through early morning streets,

boots echoing the clatter of the girls clogs starting their shift at Medlock Mill. 

Then down the pit-shaft to the stables underground and the ponies. 

They’re tough, full of heart, they rub silky noses against my dirty, calloused hands

gently nuzzling with soft mouths for the treats I bring, an apple

or mints, it varies their diet, hay and chopped maize, hot water

to make a mash, keeps them fettled for their work, hard gruelling

work, they only see daylight once a year, at Wakes week

Rest of the time they drag heavy wagons along the rails

loaded with Coal and Slate that weigh heavier than they do

They could smell the damp, the gas that could kill or explode

sooner than any Canary, they would warn me, I would shout the others

The day of the call-up picture I asked if I could have a pony

Just to stand with him and show how he helped the miners

how we would win the war. The answer came back from above, No!

So I held two horseshoes, people should know the ponies work

(ii)

Now here I am in France. I’d heard the ponies were being drafted

I volunteered so now I’m here, getting the ponies ready to fight

for their country, here in this bloody, never ending, war, a farrier still.

They work twenty four hours a day, quiet as lambs, carrying

food, water and ammunition to the front, starved, sodden and spent. 

Little did I know, here above ground, they would still let me know

they smell the gas the Germans call dampf, the terror of the trenches

Like the Tommies these ponies die in their thousands, it makes

Me ask, which is worse, struggling on in the darkness of the pit

Or struggling here like this, blown apart and stitched together again? 

This terrible world they’ve entered frightens them and the poor bloody soldiers, 

conscripts mostly, like the ponies, the blasting at the coal face is nothing 

compared to the barrage of the constant Guns that drown us in the 

rattling death of the front and the choking of the damps

(iii)

When the gas came I wasn’t ready, the gas mask was a nuisance

It scared the ponies, first I knew they started to go down, front knees

first like they were in church starting to pray, then I knew, ‘the damps’

over they went, I got the mask on too late, so I joined them in prayer

Now I’m back home, my war is over, I’ll never go down the pit again,

the air's too poor underground, I cannot breathe. They say it will kill me