'NERVE PILLS': A NEW POEM ABOUT WORLD WAR 0NE...

Nerve Pills

The Child:

It might have been his sister’s fault,

Blowing into small brown paper bags

Then squeezing the necks and smacking the inflations

To make ‘BANGS’, sudden and very loud…

He would jump, nervously, as a result,

Developing a dislike for sudden, harsh noises,

Growing up with a fear of explosions,

With fingers in ears in a firework crowd…

The World War 1 infantryman:

Dusk. Quiet. Overcast. 

Squatting, he clutched his rifle

Across damp, aching knees,

Body shaking a trifle,

Itching, due to the fleas.

Silent. Sullen. Downcast.

Night. Explosion. Shell.

Huddling, he clutched sore shins

With cold, groping arms,

Eyes evading a sergeant’s grins,

Sweating in nervous palms.

Terror. Confusion. Hell.

Jar. Tablet. Relief.

Agitating, he clutched one pill

In grimy, calloused hand,

Quivering, horror-stricken still;

Despising that accursed land.

Cacophony. Detonation. Grief… 

Pete Ray

September 2018

I was able to purchase a small, empty, amber 

bottle of ‘Dr Cassell’s Flesh Forming Strengthening Tablets’, from ‘bambOOzlikArt’ in Lincoln. 

These were apparently available to First World War soldiers.

The advertising advised taking the pills to avert nervous collapse, indigestion, shell shock, paralysis, headache, heart palpitation and wasting disease, as well as other complaints described in the advertisement below…

The poem relates to a fictitious soldier in a trench.

My two grandfathers, pictured below, fought in those trenches.

Did they ever see Dr Cassell’s remedies? 

MATERNAL GRANDFATHER, SEATED IN THE MIDDLE OF TWO OTHER OFFICERS...

PATERNAL GRANDFATHER...