Mud

The official war artist, Major Sir William Orpen*, portrayed the awful conditions that men experienced at 'The Front', in his poem The Church, Zillebeke, October 1918. The mud landscape that became synonymous with the Battle of Passchendaele was unimaginable to the ordinary civilian back home and Orpen's poem attempts to describe it:

(Right, Self-Portrait in Battledress in an area under bombardment,© IWM ART 5255a)

The Church, Zillebeke, October 1918

Mud
Everywhere –
Nothing but mud.
The very air seems thick with it,
The few tufts of grass are all smeared with it –
Mud!
The Church a heap of it;
One look, and weep for it.
That’s what they’ve made of it –
Mud!
Slimy and wet,
Churned and upset;
Here Bones that once mattered
With crosses lie scattered,
Broken and battered,
Covered in mud,
Here, where the Church’s bell
Tolled when our heroes fell
In that mad start of hell –
Mud!
That’s all that’s left of it – mud!

(William Orpen)

*Major Sir William Newenham Montague Orpen, (b. 27 November 1878 – d. 29 September 1931) was born at Stillorgan, County Dublin. During the First World War, he was the most prolific of the official war artists on the Western Front. He produced drawings and paintings of ordinary soldiers, the dead, and German prisoners of war, as well as portraits of generals and politicians. He donated 138 of his works to the British government and they are now held or displayed in the Imperial War Museum, London.