Machine Gun Corps Memorial, Hyde Park, London, England. A statue of David is flanked on either side by a wreathed Vickers machine gun. © 2013 by John M. Shea
Erected to commemorate the glorious heroes of the Machine Gun Corps who fell in the Great WarSaul hath slain his thousands but David his tens of thousandsMCMXIV MCMXVIXReverse:The Machine Gun Corps of which his Majesty King George V was Colonel-in-Chief was formed by Royal Warrant dated the 14th day of October 1915.The Corps served in France, Flanders, Russia, Italy, Egypt, Palestine, Mesopotamia, Salonica, India, Afghanistan, and East Africa.The last unit of the Corps to be disbanded was the Depot at Shorncliffe on the 15th day of July 1922. The total number who served in the Corps was some 11,500 Officers and 159,000 other ranks of whom 1,120 Officers and 12,671 other ranks were killed and 2,881 Officers and 45,277 other ranks were wounded, missing, or prisoners of war.
"On 30 March 1914 I was looking forward with acute anxiety to the Atherstone point-to-point meeting (to be held next day). All my world was centred in the desire to steer old Cockbird first past the post in some silly, jolly race over hedge and ditch.And I did it. And the world went on just the same! 30 March 1916 I was in the trenches at Fricourt-Mamets, hating the Germans for killing my friend, and wondering if they'd kill me. But they didn't! And to-night I've been guzzling at the Godbert restaurant with a captain of the Dublin Fusiliers, and a captain of the Caemeronians, and three other Welsh Fusiliers; and the bill was 230 francs; and we drank Veuve Clicquot; and the others have gone into the dark city to look for harlots; and I'm alone in my room; looking out of a balconied window at the town, with few lights, and the moon and silver drifts of cloud going eastward; and the railway station looming romantic as old Baghdad. And next week we march away 'to hazards whence no tears can win us'."
Siegfried Sassoon writing on March 30, 1917 of March 30ths three years and one year before. Sassoon's trilogy, The Memoirs of George Sherston are comprised of The Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man, Memoirs of an Infantry Officer, and Sherston's Progress. After an extended medical leave in England, Sassoon had returned to the front, and was turning against the war. A point-to-point meeting is a steeplechase, a horse race that includes fence-jumping, a 'jolly race over hedge and ditch,' as in a fox hunt.Thomas Hardy's poem 'The Men Who March Away' was published in The Times of London September 9, 1914, four days after Hardy wrote it with both Hardy and the paper foregoing copyright. Sassoon had referenced the poem on January 17, 1917. The lines (line 5, repeated as line 33) Sassoon quotes, 'To hazards whence no tears can win us' is from the original. Hardy later changed it to, 'Leaving all that here can win us.' The first stanza from Hardy's Complete Poems, page 538:What of the faith and fire within us Men who march away Ere the barn-cocks say Night is growing gray,Leaving all that here can win us;What of the faith and fire within us Men who march away?
Siegfried Sassoon Diaries 1915-1918 by Siegfried Sassoon, page 146, copyright © George Sassoon, 1983; Introduction and Notes Rupert Hart-Davis, 1983, publisher: Faber and Faber, publication date: 1983
1917-03-30, 1917, March, Hardy, Thomas Hardy, Men who march away, steeplechase, British soldier, English soldier, Machine Gun Corps
