Poem: ‘A Mother’s thoughts on the eve of war’ by Jo Skelt

On the eve of her son’s departure to fight in World War One, a Birmingham mother, Mary Elizabeth Herrick, looks out of her kitchen window up at the sky checking the weather as if reading or trying to divine what will come, taking a moment to collect her thoughts…

Commissioned for the Birmingham World War One commemoration on August 3 2014, this poem was inspired by a family I read about in a display in Ward End Library. The Herricks were a large family and would have been better off than the average family and educated. They lived in a detached house on Washwood Heath road. At this point all Mary’s children were alive but her first born son Henry (the subject of the poem) goes, tragically, dies in the war. Her younger boys later go to fight and survive. Here, I am trying to imagine how she might have felt and portray an inkling or sense of foreboding of things to come. This is written almost like a diary or imagined inner thought and with poetic license i.e. not attempting to be entirely historically accurate.

 

A mother’s thoughts on the eve of war

On Henry’s bed, I have just laid out

his military tunic, neatly pressed

like his first starched school uniform,

and his new peaked cap

its two brass buttons shining brilliantly,

as if already victorious.

 

A special rifle patch has been sown

above the breast pocket

and I cannot bring myself to look at it

or to contemplate wholly, why

they are preparing him for trench warfare,

rifle fire and grenade attacks.

 

You know, they checked Henry’s teeth

when he enlisted,

as if he were an animal

– how I wished they had been rotten.

 

But the 14^th Royal Warwickshire Regiment

has cast its spell,

Henry is bedazzled by the Regimental band,

football matches and boxing contests,

dreaming no doubt of glory,

the promise of arriving on French soil

of returning to his sweetheart here

more a man: a brave soldier.

 

I wonder has he really contemplated

what lies between? Have I?

Have any of us?

Birmingham, the entire city

seems poised for change, expectant,

strangely more excited

than trepidatious.

 

It is now evening, 3 August 1914,

from my kitchen window

I can see Annie, Ada and Ernest

playing in the yard, animated silhouettes,

like the Punch and Judy puppets

we saw once at the seaside,

each of them blissfully unaware

that their eldest brother, their own Henry

is leaving tomorrow for the War.

 

Thank heavens my other boys

are still too young for this,

I shall guard them closely

till Henry’s home again – at Christmas so they say.

It is battle enough to keep them

all alive, safe from influenza,

the cold wet weather

descending in cold fronts

when the Autumn comes.

 

Sometimes I feel he is lost to me

already, endlessly thumbing his tobacco

and his mess tin absorbed in imaginary adventures,

his rifle standing by the front door

as if killing time.

 

And they tell me to feel proud

to wave my flag

but I see only my children’s silhouettes

inside which are mouths to feed,

another on the way, the twins crying

from the parlour,

and in the fading light, my once white washing

hanging like old party bunting

-a neglected pledge for peace,

soaking up the spitting rain

while from the east, I can just make out

dark clouds gathering…

 

Sergeant Henry Douglas Herrick – at 19 was a Fitter and Turner

Arthur, Cecil, Harry – all 3 served in the War and Cecil wounded and received DCM

Mary Elizabeth Herrick (ne Teal) and her family lived at 177 Washwood Heath Rd at Bennets Hill House.

Her husband was Joseph Alfred Herrick of Herrick and Co. (Sock manufacturers) and also a Birmingham Councillor. They had two further children Ivy and Norman.

 

Jo Skelt (Birmingham Poet Laureate 2013-2014)

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