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
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