'But You Call This Instinct'

Tucked into a brief section at the back of The Poems of Edmund Blunden (Cobden-Sanderson, 1930) titled “Occasional Pieces” is “Under a Thousand Words,” a poem that seems at first to have little to do with Blunden’s service in the Great War. At age nineteen, Blunden was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Royal Sussex Regiment. He served for almost two years on the Western Front, took part in the engagements at Ypres and the Somme, and was awarded the Military Cross. 

“‘A thousand words on Courage.’—This request

Dropped on me like a bomb on a sandbag shelter,

And after much vague mental repetition

Ranging from La Boisselle to Lord Macaulay,

And metaphysical cross-examination

On memories of conspicuous gallant conduct,

I gave it up.

That afternoon our boat

Touched on a mud-flat, which we chose to cross.

And as we waddled through it, a three-inch crab

Disputed progress; one of his arms was gone;

The other he held ready like a boxer.

And backed and sidled to our every movement.

His one arm ready; and to command full view

Of the two monsters who had crossed the frontier.

He strained his body backward, and stood titled,

Parrying every stroke we acted at him.

Eyeing us, holding the line.

‘But you call this Instinct.’”

 

During the week of Veterans Day (November 11), high-minded editors often call for comparably high-minded, embarrassingly idealistic think pieces on Patriotism and Courage – stuff to inspire the folks on the home front. In my experience, veterans snort at such concocted marzipan. Blunden is mostly polite about it. One clue as to his true subject (this is not a nature poem) is the reference to La Boiselle, a village in France contested during the opening days of the Battle of the Somme. On the first day, July 1, 1916, British forces alone suffered more than 57,000 casualties, including more than 19,00 killed. Andrew Roberts writes in Elegy: The First Day on the Somme (Head of Zeus, 2015):

 

“It has been calculated that it would take three and a half days for the 888,246 British  and Commonwealth troops who died in the First World War to march past the Cenotaph in Whitehall, London, even at four men abreast.”