Rhymes of a Red Cross Man

by Robert W. Service

This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.

Genres: Poetry, Classics, Fiction

127 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1916

About the author

This author is the the British-Canadian writer of Yukon poetry. For the British historian of modern Russia, see Robert Service.

Robert William Service was born into a Scottish family while they were living in Preston, England. He was schooled in Scotland, attending Hillhead High School in Glasgow. He moved to Canada at the age of 21 when he gave up his job working in a Glasgow bank, and traveled to Vancouver Island, British Columbia with his Buffalo Bill outfit and dreams of becoming a cowboy.

He drifted around western North America, taking and quitting a series of jobs. Hired by the Canadian Bank of Commerce, he worked in a number of its branches before being posted to the branch in Whitehorse (not Dawson) in the Yukon Territory in 1904, six years after the Klondike Gold Rush. Inspired by the vast beauty of the Yukon wilderness, Service began writing poetry about the things he saw.

Conversations with locals led him to write about things he hadn't seen, many of which hadn't actually happened, as well. He did not set foot in Dawson City until 1908, arriving in the Klondike ten years after the Gold Rush, but his renown as a writer was already established.

For more information, please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_W._Service.

Reviews

[Lee · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a marvelous discovery. I found amongst books left by my Brother in Law, Bob Pasco, deceased. He was a fan of Robert Service. loved his poetry. The Poems extremely well, tell the horror of fighting for the trenches in WWI, but also the triumphs, the love of man for man, and the immense pride & bravery of the Soldiers. I had a poem or two a day, about all of the emotion and tears I could experience.

[Izzy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found this book while unpacking after my recent move, and boy is it a gem. Robert W. Service, who served as a ambulance driver during world war 1, captures not only the pain and misery of war but the bonds of brotherhood between the soldiers. His poetry is heart wrenching, beautiful, sad, and hopeful. I highly recommend this book to someone interested in world war 1, poetry, or history. I plan on giving this a reread sometime soon.

[Barbara · Rating 3 out of 5]

This certainly isn't Wilfred Owen or Siegfried Sassoon---Service's poetry has much more in common with Kipling's Barrack Room Ballads. Written in 1916, the poems still show a lot of the romantic enthusiasm of the early war years. There's plenty of blood, patriotism, and propangandistic lingo here, but there's also a lot of understanding of the common soldier. I don't know this, but I would imagine his verse would have been popular with a lot of people who wouldn't have bothered to read more "serious" poetry. As a kid I loved his Yukon poems (The Cremation of Sam McGee, the Shooting of Dan McGrew, etc) and this is really the same stuff, just transported to the fields of France. Doggerel, but strangely affecting.

[Natasha · Rating 5 out of 5]

I picked up an original of this book at a garage sale of all places, and I fell in love with it. The yellowed pages make the poetry inside that much more powerful, and it's pretty powerful to begin with. If you can't pick up one of these editions, at least read the poems within.

[Daryl-Ann · Rating 5 out of 5]

Favorites, although they are all absolutely marvelous: The Man From Athabaska, The Lark, Young Fellow My Lad, On the Wire, My Prisoner, The Revelation, The Black Dudeen, Bill the Bomber, The Whistle of Sandy McGraw, The Stretcher-Bearer, L'Envoi (closing the collection), and Carry On (below)

Carry On
It's easy to fight when everything's right,
And you're mad with the thrill and the glory;
It's easy to cheer when victory's near,
And wallow in fields that are gory.
It's a different song when everything's wrong,
When you're feeling infernally mortal;
When it's ten against one, and hope there is none,
Buck up, little soldier, and chortle:

Carry on! Carry on!
There isn't much punch in your blow.
You're glaring and staring and hitting out blind;
You're muddy and bloody, but never you mind.
Carry on! Carry on!
You haven't the ghost of a show.
It's looking like death, but while you've a breath,
Carry on, my son! Carry on!

And so in the strife of the battle of life
It's easy to fight when you're winning;
It's easy to slave, and starve and be brave,
When the dawn of success is beginning.
But the man who can meet despair and defeat
With a cheer, there's the man of God's choosing;
The man who can fight to Heaven's own height
Is the man who can fight when he's losing.

Carry on! Carry on!
Things never were looming so black.
But show that you haven't a cowardly streak,
And though you're unlucky you never are weak.
Carry on! Carry on!
Brace up for another attack.
It's looking like hell, but - you never can tell:
Carry on, old man! Carry on!

There are some who drift out in the deserts of doubt,
And some who in brutishness wallow;
There are others, I know, who in piety go
Because of a Heaven to follow.
But to labour with zest, and to give of your best,
For the sweetness and joy of the giving;
To help folks along with a hand and a song;
Why, there's the real sunshine of living.

Carry on! Carry on!
Fight the good fight and true;
Believe in your mission, greet life with a cheer;
There's big work to do, and that's why you are here.
Carry on! Carry on!
Let the world be the better for you;
And at last when you die, let this be your cry:
CARRY ON, MY SOUL! CARRY ON!

[Brian Page · Rating 4 out of 5]

The renown of Robert W. Service’s Songs of a Sourdough has eclipsed his World War I poetry, The Rhymes of a Red-Cross Man, and that is unfortunate. The biggest challenge for the modern reader might be Service’s style of writing in dialect. His characters drop their Hs and quite a few other letters as well. But it’s easy to get past that with phonetic reading and on to the poignancy. Service tried to enlist in the British army but was deemed too old at 41. So he served in the ambulance corp and was decorated for his service. He experienced the worst of war and captured it in as able verse as any of the war poets.

“And you yourself would mutter when
You took the thing that once were men,
And sped them through that zone of hate
To where the dripping surgeons wait;
And wonder too if in God’s sight
War ever, ever can be right.”

Some of the standout poems to me are “My Mate,” “The Coward,” “A Song of the Sandbags,” “The Stretcher-Bearer,” and this from “The Revelation:”

“We’ll breathe free air and we’ll bivouac under the starry sky;
We’ll march with men, and we’ll fight with men, and we’ll see men laugh and die;
We’ll know such joy as we never dreamed; we’ll fathom the deeps of pain:
But the hardest bit of it all will be – when we come back home again.”

“My Foe” is especially poignant:

“Not for him the pity be.
Ye who pity, pity me,
Crawling now the ways I trod,
Blood-guilty in the sight of God.”

And then there’s “The Song of the Pacifist.”

Victory! There can be but one, hallowed in every land:
When by the graves of our common dead we who were foemen stand;
And in the hush of our common grief hand is tendered to hand.”

[Glenn Proven · Rating 4 out of 5]

From the Foreword:

So here’s my sheaf of war-won verse,
And some is bad, and some is worse.
And if at times I curse a bit,
You needn’t read that part of it;
For through it all like horror runs
The red resentment of the guns.
And you yourself would mutter when
You took the things that once were men,
And sped them through that zone of hate
To where the dripping surgeons wait;
And wonder too if in God’s sight
War ever, ever can be right.

A pretty good idea of his style. Most of the poems are short, so a great read for killing time while running errands. The poems are about the many people he encounters. Some of the poems are about the glory and spirit of the warriors. Some are about the tragedy and devastation caused by war. Some are about the civilians. Some are funny. Some are sad. Some are romantic. Some are brutal. All are honest attempts to capture a feeling or sentiment of a wartime moment.

This was published while WW1 was still going on. As the book title states he drove an ambulance from front lines to the hospitals. His brother was a Canadian Infantry Officer who died just before publishing. So he saw much and lost much while compiling this.

My favorite book by one of my favorite poets (it’s a short list.) Most scholars don’t think much of him, and even he thought of himself as just a fellow with a knack for a clever rhyme, but he was able to make a career for himself writing verse. This is a solid collection for people who don’t usually like poetry.

For instance, my father (the guy who introduced me to this poet) used a handyman named John Robert. His company was Robert Service. My whole family would smile knowing about the connection. Years after my father died, I had cause to hire John. He said my dad would read him poems by Robert Service while he worked. John enjoyed them very much.

[Mike Kanner · Rating 4 out of 5]

You don't often think of Robert Service as one of the war poets. However, his time as a stretcher bearer and ambulance driver gave him a perspective similar to those poets, such as Owens and Graves, who served in combat units.

Unlike the jingoistic poetry of Kipling, it would be hard to say that Service was for or against the War. His poems, often in dialect, are written from the perspective of the soldier in the trench. They reflect the dismal conditions and the proximity to death as a matter of chance.

At the same time, he brings out that soldiers often had a mixed view of the Germans who they faced. They may call them thugs and villains, yet they often were sympathetic to the individual soldiers who also had family waiting for them.

[Jesse · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating blend of war enthusiasm, anti war satire and some plain descriptive without much perspective on either side (or mixed of both).

[Christine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow! I almost didn’t read this - I would have really missed out. Very compelling and deeply moving.

[Brandy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book with all it's Rhymes was a good book to start my first Remember-A-Thon, it was my first readathon I made and I will do it again for 2025 =)

[Mark Isaak · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is definitely a book of its time. It is poetry about World War I, back when it was simply the Great War. It was written at a time when poetry was meant to be enjoyable to read, with meter, rhyme, and alliteration making the lines trip off the tongue. Service does this well, but some of his poems use dialect which is difficult to decipher (e.g., "'ave yer bay'nit ready"). The themes of the poem deal with war's suffering, its glory, its impact on soldiers and survivors. The poems extolling how virtuous it is to go to war sound ironic to my ears, but as I said, it is a book of its time.

[Subi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love how Robert W Service writes. Poems aren't always easy for me, but his are great. This book was published in 1916 in London. One of my favorite books.

[Mark T. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Simultaneously beautiful and sad poems that depicts both the best attributes of men and the worst of experiences during World War I.