Comments about Edmund Blunden
Click to write a comment about Edmund Blunden
welfordwrites: Edmund Blunden, a 20th century British poet.
war_poets: 1 March 1942 Keith Douglas writes to Edmund Blunden describing how he accidentally killed an Arab in Cairo who ran out from behind a lorry into the truck Douglas was driving.
war_poets: 22 February 1918 Edmund Blunden departs for the UK for six months rest.
war_poets: 14 February 1918 Edmund Blunden is temporarily appointed battalion adjutant.
war_poets: 3 February 1917 Edmund Blunden reports ‘Quiet on our front today, but a great deal of shelling heard on N. of salient. Enemy plane Albatross type flew to and fro 200 yards up, over our front lines. Our men fired frequently on it without result.’
war_poets: 2 February 1917 Edmund Blunden writes in his intelligence report ‘It was noticed that when enemy was shelling I 4a 1.1 at a steady rate, there were four gun reports to each shell that actually came over. It is supposed enemy was using blanks for some reason'
war_poets: 1 February 1917 Edmund Blunden writes to HQ ‘With reference to envelope returned to you by bearer I regret that the other message which came with it cannot now be found. I am having a search made for it: meanwhile would you be kind enough to let me have a duplicate?'
war_poets: 1 February 1917 (might be misdated) Edmund Blunden and Private Shearing are on patrol ‘to find any dead or other identifications left by the Bosche. Result: No dead found. 8 hand grenades and 1 grey puttee the only result.’
war_poets: 28 January 1917 Edmund Blunden’s Battalion is relieved by the 14th Hants. He notes ‘Some artillery during the day; cold continues.’
war_poets: 27 January 1917 Edmund Blunden writes ‘Still bitterly cold. Guns & planes all the morning. […] Patrols hourly through the night.’
war_poets: 26 January 1917 Edmund Blunden writes ‘Enemy registers our left front & support. Great aircraft activity. 1 Boche driven down. False S.O.S. at 6 p.m. brings our artillery into action.’
war_poets: 25 January 1917 Edmund Blunden writes ‘Early in morning Boche raids our extreme right with some success. Day fairly quiet but false gas alarm in evening raises Artillery strafe. 30 coils of wire put out on our front.’
war_poets: 24 January 1917 Edmund Blunden writes ‘Heavy shelling of billets all day. Working Parties supplied to RE and Town Major. Battalion relieves 14th Hants’
war_poets: 23 January 1917 Edmund Blunden writes ‘Working parties continue. Harassed by shelling. Enemy aircraft very busy and bring down 2 of our planes.’
war_poets: 20 January 1917 Edmund Blunden’s Battalion returns to billets in and near the Convent in Ypres.
war_poets: 19 January 1917 Edmund Blunden notes ‘Quiet. 1 man slightly wounded by sniper. Wirers do good work with new V-system of wiring. Patrols continued.’
CaesiaGerma: supposed to be a response to “The Midnight Skaters” by Edmund Blunden
war_poets: 18 January 1917 Edmund Blunden writes ‘More snow. Boche again quiet. Bn again shows up well as regards patrol work. [...] Two heavy trains reported very close to the line between 7 and 8 pm and clanking of iron rails being dropped, with other tumult’
war_poets: 17 January 1917 Edmund Blunden writes ‘Heavy snow. Quiet day. Good patrolling done. Our Patrol's progress audible to our listening post and visible against the snow while out in N.M. Land.’
war_poets: 16 January 1917 Edmund Blunden’s Battalion marches up to relieve 2/8 King’s Liverpool Irish in Railway Wood Left.
war_poets: 15 January 1917 Edmund Blunden writes ‘Battalion marches after dark into Ypres and rests in the Convent and cellars near by.’
war_poets: 13 January 1917 Edmund Blunden writes ‘Weather dismal. Railway construction impossible. Inspections in billets.’
war_poets: 10 January 1917 Still on railway construction duty, Edmund Blunden writes ‘Reconnoitring party proceeds to the Railway Wood Sector of the Ypres Salient.’
war_poets: 9 January 1917 Edmund Blunden writes ‘Battalion employed on Railway Construction all day.’
welfordwrites: Edmund Blunden, a 20th century British poet.
war_poets: 4 January 1917 Edmund Blunden’s Battalion is relieved by the 14th Hampshire regiment. He writes ‘Rest and cleaning. Brigade working parties supplied in evening. Camp maintenance and improvements begun.’
war_poets: 3 January 1917 Edmund Blunden writes ‘Battalion relieved without casualties by 14th Hants and marches to reserve billets at Rassel Fm Elverdinghe’
war_poets: 3 January 1917 Edmund Blunden writes 'Six rockets were fired by our front line coys at 9 p.m. last night. Three were successful. Two of the other three rose about 20 feet but were caught in a gust of wind and blown back to the ground where they burned out.'
war_poets: 2 January 1917 Edmund Blunden writes ‘Minenwerfers again, and M.G. tunnel in front line vanishes.’
war_poets: 1 January 1917 Edmund Blunden’s battalion is in trenches at Boesinghe. ‘Minenwerfer busy especially on Belgian front.’
war_poets: 31 December 1917 Edmund Blunden writes ‘At the moment of midnight, December 31, 1917, I stood with some acquaintances in a camp finely overlooking the whole Ypres battlefield. It was bitterly cold, and the deep snow all round lay frozen.'
war_poets: 30 December 1916 Edmund Blunden and his battalion relieved the Welsh on the extreme left of the British Line, where it adjoined the Belgian.
war_poets: 28 December 1916 Edmund Blunden records the operational orders for his Battalion’s relief of the 3rd London Rifles in the Boesinghe section on the evening of December 30th ‘“Relief Complete” will be cabled to Batt. H.Q., code being What’s Yours?’
war_poets: 25 December 1916 Edmund Blunden writes to his mother ‘We had Church on Christmas morning and dealt with the usual hymns in the best style. The Swains’ Vigil, or While Shepherds Watched, was favourably received'
war_poets: 25 December 1917 Edmund Blunden is on a signal course, learning about German wireless procedures.
war_poets: 24 December 1916 Edmund Blunden reports on work done that week ‘Duckboarding between all posts in the Bn. Front was repaired nightly by us, at least 200 men being employed nightly on Front Line maintenance'
war_poets: 18 December 1916 Edmund Blunden returns to France from leave.
war_poets: 16 December 1940 Edmund Blunden writes to Keith Douglas saying he has sent Douglas’s poems to T.S. Eliot at Faber & Faber
war_poets: 5 December 1916 Edmund Blunden’s battalion begins a period of rest and refitting in deep reserve.
welfordwrites: Edmund Blunden, a 20th century British poet. Click the link!
MereEnglish: WHITE SUPREMACY:
White Supremacist Racist Colonialist
Hard-Right European Culture
Here they went with smock and crook,
Toiled in the sun, lolled in the shade,
Here they mudded out the brook
And here their hatchet cleared the glade:
Forefathers by Edmund Blunden
war_poets: 15 November 1916 Edmund Blunden writes ‘Of all the treasured romances of the world, is there anything to make the blood sing itself along, to brighten the eye, to fill the ear with unheard melodies, like a marching battalion in which one’s own body is going?’
jeannemarieM3: Wonderful piece for November 11 on Edmund Blunden:
Marjorie_Mallon: Smorgasbord Podcast - The War Poets - Rupert Brooke, Vera Brittain, Edmund Blunden, Siegfried Sassoon
sgc58: Smorgasbord Podcast - The War Poets - Rupert Brooke, Vera Brittain, Edmund Blunden, Siegfried Sassoon
war_poets: 13 November 1916 Edmund Blunden writes 'orders came that we were to supply three hundred men that night, to carry up wiring materials to positions in advance of those newly captured, those positions to be reconnoitred immediately. This meant me.’
joyus1uk: In this week of remembrance. Pillbox by Edmund Blunden.
NathanFrancis__: “They died in splendour, these who claimed no spark of glory save the light in a friend's eye.”
Poems:
war_poets: 1 November 1896 Edmund Blunden is born in London.
MostlyPrint: Though commonly I fail to name
That once obvious Hill,
And where we went and whence we came
To be killed, or kill.
Edmund Blunden, awarded the Military Cross in 1917.
DurhamWASP: In those old marshes yet the rifles lie,
On the thin breastwork flutter the grey rags,
The very books I read are there—and I
Dead as the men I loved, wait while life drags.
Edmund Blunden, born 1st November 1896
johnsimkin: Today in history concerns stories about William Shakespeare (1604), Abraham Lincoln (1861), Philip Noel-Baker (1889), John Haldane (1892), Edmund Blunden (1896), Naomi Mitchison (1897), Beatrice Webb (1913) and Imre Nagy (1956),
war_poets: 28 October 1917 Edmund Blunden writes 'Our camp by Westoutre at length appeared, through a drifting rain, in the bottom of a valley, undisguised slabby clay; the houses hereabouts were mean, and no entertainment for the troops could be anticipated'
war_poets: 26 October 1941 Keith Douglas sends two poems – ‘Adams’ and ‘The 2 Virtues’ – to Edmund Blunden, noting that he is shortly due to return to active service.
welfordwrites: Edmund Blunden, a 20th century British poet. Click the link!
war_poets: 19 October 1917 Edmund Blunden leaves the trenches ‘my company was halting in the open, near Hunwater Dugout. At once the Germans fired so many illuminants that the ground with its pools was like a jeweller’s shop’
war_poets: 17 October 1941 Keith Douglas sends a copy of ‘Negative Information’ to Edmund Blunden.
As lines, the unrelated symbols of
Nothing you know, discovered in the clouds
war_poets: 10 October 1941 Keith Douglas writes to Edmund Blunden from the 23rd Scottish General Hospital at Nathanya in Palestine after picking up an ear infection in Cairo. He claims to have read 32 books during his 3-week stay.
war_poets: 7 October 1916 Edmund Blunden writes to his sister Charlotte 'Tom Sawyer's ingenious antics are at present my principal book and bible. I have also found a 6/- novel called 'Impertinent Reflections' which might fill up any odd minutes - if any.'
war_poets: 7 October 1938 Keith Douglas goes up to Oxford to read English – Edmund Blunden is his tutor
war_poets: 6 October 1917 Edmund Blunden is undergoing gas training ‘It was even a pleasure here to see Williams, the divisional gas officer, and his same old sergeant, at their kindly, deadly work again’
I_W_M: Above all, he concentrates on the struggle that so many had endured over the previous six years, finishing on the recognition that ‘We have come through’.
Learn more:
war_poets: 6 October 1916 Edmund Blunden writes to his sister Charlotte 'I have been pained to hear & see enormous guns of ours firing shells the size of Charlie Chaplin.'
war_poets: 27 September 1916 Edmund Blunden writes ‘Cold and wet and lack of sleep are enemies to the finest soldiers. There is also the added enemy of the presence of so many dead men. And after a while the dead become more than frightful to the mind’
war_poets: 26 September 1916 Edmund Blunden 'we made ostentatious “smoke attacks,” which gave me a change of employment. These attacks deluded some German machine gunners, and drew some shellfire, perhaps intended rather as a snub to impudence than as a genuine display of anxiety’
WillTullett: Writing from Hong Kong, July 1926, Edmund Blunden asks Siegfried Sassoon if he is still working on his history of the war, saying 'I can still smell the shelling and chloride of lime - but I can't remember the Base; nor the long journeys to and from leave'.
war_poets: 18 September 1917 Edmund Blunden rejoins his battalion ‘It was then that a shell fell among the headquarters staff on the way up, and killed Naylor, the philosophic and artistic lieutenant who had served in the battalion almost all my time'
welfordwrites: Edmund Blunden, a 20th century British poet. Click the link!
war_poets: 14 September 1916 Edmund Blunden is in new trenches in Beaumont Hamel ‘My batman and a large number of his cronies used to spell the name of our new locality “Ocean Villas,” but it appears on the map as Auchonvillers'
war_poets: 10 September 1916 Edmund Blunden asks why his siblings don’t write more frequently ‘I often wonder why some of them don’t find time to write me a letter–surely they can do so more easily than I can? For very often with us it’s a case of Write that letter or get that hour’s sleep’
war_poets: 1 September 1916 Edmund Blunden writes ‘Another postponement took me dustily back to the battalion in the wood watched by so many German observation balloons in the morning sun. '
war_poets: 1 September 1943 Keith Douglas sends a copy of ‘Vergissmeinnicht’ to Edmund Blunden, describing it as ‘a bit grisly for TLS.’
ShearsmanBooks: J.H. Prynne's Whitman & Truth is a set of reading notes intended to introduce third-year university students to Whitman’s reading of war, with enlightening comparisons offered from the work Susan Sontag, Sir Philip Sidney, Mo Yan, Edmund Blunden, & others.
ForgottenGPoems: Here's a WWI poem by Edmund Blunden (1896-1974). Taken from The Poems of Edmund Blunden (1930). He doesn't sound as modern as Owen or Sassoon or even Rosenberg, but I feel drawn to these lines nonetheless. They remind me faintly of Wilbur's "First Snow in Alsace" from WWII.
war_poets: 12 August 1943 Keith Douglas sends a poem titled ‘The Sniper’ to Edmund Blunden. This becomes ‘How to Kill’ in the Collected Poems.
welfordwrites: Edmund Blunden, a 20th century British poet. Click the link!
michaelscaines: The Battlefields have now almost disappeared under vast harvests of oats, rye, beetroot, swedes and clover..
– Edmund Blunden returns to France, Aug 4 1932
war_poets: 2 August 1917 at the Falkenhayn Redoubt Edmund Blunden writes ‘The most wicked 24 hours I have been through, Somme included. Heavy rain never stopped and Bosch smashing up yet the trench and what few little funk holes there were with 8 inchers all day long.’
war_poets: 30 July 1917 Edmund Blunden writes ‘A Bosch plane came over and we were shrapnelled for half an hour, don’t know why.’
war_poets: 27 July 1917 Edmund Blunden writes ‘Suddenly extraordinary rumours began to flit round that the Bosch had withdrawn beyond St Julien – these were officially bolstered up as facts and chaos reigned again. '
ForgottenGPoems: Friends: Have you read any of Edmund Blunden's poetry?
war_poets: 26 July 1917 Edmund Blunden writes ‘orders received for Serjeant Ashford and myself to attend Bde Signal Conference. Like unto camels in the hottest Sahara, we slaved down - & found all finished. Consequently we spent another civilised night which we hadn’t expected.’
war_poets: 25 July 1917 Edmund Blunden ‘Again inspected the daybreak & reduced same to the General’s pro forma. About 8.30 rain started. I spent the morning hunting details down. A little thunder distantly heard.’
war_poets: 24 July 1917 Edmund Blunden ‘Got up again to report on the light, only the pro forma called it a “luminosity”. […] A busy day, including a Court of Enquiry & much detail work; and again very sombre heat.’
war_poets: 23 July 1917 Edmund Blunden is still feeling unwell ‘A report has come down that 2Lt Conway who went up to patrol the Bosch wire is missing: so Amon was sent to do further patrols. I asked to go up with him but was refused in case new orders might come in re Signals.'
war_poets: 22 July 1917 Edmund Blunden writes ‘This day I was very ill and don’t remember much what happened. The dump I mentioned yesterday was still going off in the early morning with one or two monstrous flames & explosions'
war_poets: 20 July 1917 Edmund Blunden writes ‘Today, in sultry sallow-coloured weather, reconnoitred new tracks via Vlemertinghe towards the Yser Canal. […] Vlam. Chateau has some grand old copper beeches, an apple orchard or two which promise well, and a rose garden going downhill'
war_poets: 19 July 1917 Edmund Blunden writes ‘We begun a trench just outside H.Q. mess. We unluckily disturbed various loud smells in the work and earned scornful humour from the critics. Another gang came on afterwards and the trench is now 5 ft deep with a great parapet.’
war_poets: 18 July 1917 Edmund Blunden ‘read Shelley and Wells’ Country of the Blind with equal pleasure. […] In the early morning the Bosch put up a 9.2” dump just over the road; and at night he made us a little uneasy with a shell or two every hour. But our guns were going all out'
war_poets: 17 July 1917 Edmund Blunden writes ‘Hotter than ever! and liquor scarce. […] Pop. Station looks very pell mell and shell holes appearing on all sides. The naval guns were firing shrapnel at our O. Ball’
war_poets: 15 July 1917 Edmund Blunden leaves Houlle for St Omer ‘a weary tramp with full packs in the hot sun of mid-day & reached St Omer at 2.55. Fixed up movement order with R.T.O and have been sitting on this forlorn truck ever since waiting for Puffing Billy to hitch on…’
war_poets: 14 July 1917 Edmund Blunden marches to the training ground in rain ‘Got roundly told off for not passing on an order to wear mackintosh sheets – which never came to me. I said “Wear ‘em if you want to.”
DonaldH11469395: “ I am for the woods against the world, But are the woods for me? [ The Kiss ]”
Edmund Blunden [ 1896- ]
DonaldH11469395: “ How shines your tower, the only one Of that especial site and stone! And even the dream’s confusion can Sustain to-morrow’s road. [ The Survival ]”
Edmund Blunden [ 1896- ]
DonaldH11469395: “ All things they have in common being so poor, And their one fear, Death’s shadow at the door. Each sundown makes them mournful, each sunrise Brings back the brightness in their failing eyes. [ Almswomen ]”
Edmund Blunden [ 1896- ]
DonaldH11469395: “ These were men of pith and thew, Whom the city never called; Scarce could read or hold a quill, Built the barn, the forge, the mill. [ Forefathers]”
Edmund Blunden [ 1896- ]
war_poets: 13 July 1917 Edmund Blunden writes ‘A very magnificent sunrise – but prophesying showers, and the sun seems very hazy and watery now (6 a.m.). I have lost another handkerchief – seem to be born for nothing else'
war_poets: 12 July 1916 Edmund Blunden writes to his mother 'My literature has been 'The Pit', Frank Norris's wheat hoarding story and two books of riff-raff (very slangy, cynical and amusing) by O. Henry.'
war_poets: 12 July 1917 Edmund Blunden writes ‘Wasted time all the morning. Another sultry day. Left Sig. School in a motor lorry with all belongings at 4 p.m. and came through Cassel and St Omer to join the battalion.'
