Where are the war poets? - Defence Academy of the United Kingdom

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the congealed genie who won't thaw until the World renounces War, cold spunk meticulously jarred never to be charrer or the charred, a bottled Bethlehem of this come- curdling Cruise/Scud-cursed millennium. I went. I pressed REWIND and PLAY and I heard the charred man say: 8. American Football (Harold Pinter) Hallelujah! It works. We blew the shit out of them. We blew the shit right back up their own ass And out their fucking ears. It works. We blew the shit out of them. They suffocated in their own shit! Hallelujah. Praise the Lord for all good things. We blew them into fucking shit. They are eating it. Praise the Lord for all good things. We blew their balls into shards of dust, Into shards of fucking dust. We did it. Now I want you to come over here and kiss me on the mouth. 9. The Next Thing (Andrew Motion) My heart stopped but my hands kept working away I had a job to do. I threw the mortar down the barrel and waited for the splash to come up, just waited. It was bang on. The PKM gunner would have shot his mouth off when my bomb landed on him. With that done, the next thing was to extract our own – but lifting a dead body from the ground is not easy. The first must have weighed fourteen stone; plus radio he was half a ton. I could not get him off the ground, not properly, not enough to put him over my shoulder. I thought, Fucking Jesus! But I managed. It is only right. Later on we met some elders of the village to discuss 33
the bodies of the enemy; they were shot up very badly. Two were dressed in black – obviously foreign fighters with grenades on them and mobile phones and notebooks. Their skin was strangely waxy and suspicious-looking. A third was wearing traditional dress with a red sash and a turban that was off at the time; his eyes were sunk and had rolled backwards: there was no brain left in there. I dug a bullet out of the wall behind him with my bayonet for a keepsake and could clearly see the swirl on the casing. Then I went down the valley to a stream with the other men and we stripped to wash our clothes in the water. Last of all we stayed firm for a while longer to do the clearance patrols. 10. Warriors (Simon Armitage) It’s just one massive ditch, the border with Kuwait, and once over the bun line the heart bounces and kicks, expecting fury unleashed, the mother of all fights, a million attackers in sandals all armed to the teeth. But there’s only sand and some goat-boy walking his herd. The gun turret spins a full 360 degrees – like an owl’s head. Rumble onward all night till you’re just about cooked. The section commander gets out for a piss and almost loses his cock. Crunch over something brittle, plough through something soft, rounds pinging the metal like jet-propelled wasps, the Warrior slewing and spinning. It roars forward, then stops. Range 410 miles, road speed 46 miles per hour – tops. Banged up for nine hours in half-light and slow heat, but it’s only the last thirty seconds that truly count, before the lid comes off. As the last moments are dealt out some guys scream and shout, bringing their blood to the boil; others stare into friends’ eyes, right to the back of the skull. Deployment is via a hydraulic door in the hull. What happens thereafter, either I won’t say, or can’t. To survive, good infantrymen keep their emotions locked and imaginations screwed shut. If not, the door of the truck becomes like the back of an old-fashioned camera: open it up and the sun floods in, blazes the film, and you’re fucked. A Rolls Royce V8 Condor engine grinds sand in its guts. 11. The Pomegranates of Kandahar (Sarah Maguire) The bald heft of ordnance A landmine shrapnel cool in its shell Red balls pinioned in pyramids 34
Page 1 and 2: ROYAL COLLEGE OF DEFENCE STUDIES SE
Page 3 and 4: ROYAL COLLEGE OF DEFENCE STUDIES
Page 5 and 6: EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Today’s wars in
Page 7 and 8: WHERE ARE THE WAR POETS: THE ROLE A
Page 9 and 10: definition from Clausewitz. His uni
Page 11 and 12: feelings’ - one person, the poet,
Page 13 and 14: or those that fight in them (‘pro
Page 15 and 16: ‘Can I Get A Witness’ 54 : Toda
Page 17 and 18: poets, who are not part of any mili
Page 19 and 20: defined as ‘the writing and readi
Page 21 and 22: But Does Anybody Still Read Poetry
Page 23 and 24: Battalion, Princess Patricia’s Ca
Page 25 and 26: Hugh Haughton sets out the argument
Page 27 and 28: BIBLIOGRAPHY Books Armitage, Simon,
Page 29 and 30: The home site of Suzanne Steele: ww
Page 31 and 32: When the dust of peace has settled
Page 33 and 34: lackthorns of your hair. All my wor
Page 35: and made the face you see today an
Page 39 and 40: and see what is there of knives and
Page 41 and 42: Before we gave them rations to take
Page 43 and 44: You’ll never see them again as fl
Page 45: 24. More Light, More Light (Anthony

Where are the war poets? - Defence Academy of the United Kingdom

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