Dylan Thomas Wouldn't Mind

"IN MEMORY OF THE "QUARRY BOYS" OF PENMAENMAWR TROOP, 6TH BATTALION ROYAL WELCH FUSILIERS WHO LANDED AT LALA BABA ON THE 9TH AUGUST 1915 AND WENT INTO ACTION THE FOLLOWING DAY. OF THE 62 NAMES ON OUR LOCAL WAR MEMORIAL, NEARLY A QUARTER LOST THEIR LIVES ON THE 10TH AUGUST 1915 OR SHORTLY AFTER" Great War Forum

Penmaenmawr, January 1916 : This seaside town is sleeping now, the hearts of it's people fluttering in the endless winter night like so many ghosts. There's Mrs Evans in her cottage, the quarry dust settling on the sill that she polished black until the slate shone like the full moon at midnight - always in the morning she wipes the dusty layers, dry as a desert, dry as her dusty eyes. But now she is dreaming and her eyes are wet, she is dreaming of her boys.

Mrs Evans : Where are you going boys?
Boys : To war, Mother.
Mrs Evans : Why must you go?
Boys : We are all going, Mother, all of us lads, all of us Quarry Boys.
Mother : Is it to France, to the trenches they speak of lined like pews, the endless lines and the rain ?
Boys : No Mother, it is a much sunnier clime, and our hearts are full of adventure.
Mother : Your feet are wet.
Boys : We are running to shore.
Mother : To Calvary ?
Boys : Gallipoli.
Mother : Does the band play a hymn ?
Boys : In our hearts, all of us sing.
Mother : But the chapel is full of young girls and old men..
Boys : Do not weep for us, Mother.
Mother : I will not weep, I will sing, and know that you go to Calvary.

But the night is long and the dust falls still, and in her sleep she floods the church of her heart with tears.

A few houses down Bob throws the coverlet to one side, his legs running the remembered ground, dodging the crack of bullets. His dream is of hide and seek, flitting wildly between boyhood games on Penmaenmawr mountain and the deadlier game of the Sulva landings. Heather and bracken morph to brittle scrub and brush as he ducks and weaves, crawls on his belly, listens out for the shout of Welsh voices, wonders where his friends are on the granite bluffs of home, wonders where the men are on the scree slopes, wonders at the Mediterranean mud.

Bob : Lads! Lads! Are you there ? Lads! Sniper to the right of me, nearly took my head off !
Lads : Is Doctor Jenkins there ? We're hurt bad.
Bob : Wounded, sent back to the shore.
Lads : Colonel Darbishire ?
Bob : Too old , he tried but they'd not let him in.
Lads : Oswald ? John ?
Bob : Gone to Heaven.
Lads : Major Wheeler ?
Bob : Gone.
Lads : We're cold, and us so close to Africa, something's wrong.
Bob : Don't give up now lads, don't leave me. I won't leave you. Lads ? Lads ?

And in his frantic, breathless, desperate sleep he fumbles through the dark to where his childhood comrades lie on the hill beside the sea.

Colonel Darbishire sweats cold at Pendyffryn Hall as he dreams of the anguishing heat of an Egyptian port. In his borrowed Private's gear he is as helpless as the men of his own Penmaenmawr Company, volunteers all, his fine quarry workmen, floating away to an unknown Hell he would have made his. Again he curses his years, again the terrible longing, the terrible guilt, again the terrible desire.

Colonel Darbishire : I must go with them! I can not, do you hear me, will not, know not how to return!
Officer : Go home, old man, I can not let you pass.
Colonel Darbishire : Ten years I trained them, the finest bunch of Terriers in the land!
Officer : And trained them well, I'm sure.
Colonel Darbishire : And I did not do that to send them into war without me!
Officer : Too old, I can't allow it. Take the next boat home.
Colonel Darbishire : Oh my men.

And the night shudders on, and there seems to be no dawn in Penmaenmawr nor all the world.

(Terriers = Territorials) ( All names and locations are historically correct, all dreams are imagined )


And for my Great Uncle, Pte Robert (Bob) Griffiths, killed in action at Messines Ridge, April 11 1918, aged 18 years:

Just as I folded your little-boy vest
the breakers spittled your Sunday best
the wet sand sinking where your feet pressed

Just as the roll of the sea on the land
shattered the shells, you lifted your hand
just as the waves fell to shore, just as grand

Over and over went waves of men
breaking and falling and over again
just as the sea used to roll, just as then

Mother I had to let go of your hand
the shattering shells, the swell of the land
and all the men waving, all of them grand

Just as I thought I alone would be blessed
the breakers wept on your Sunday best
the wet sand sinking where your feet pressed