Voices From the Graveyard: Rudyard Kipling's ‘Epitaphs of the War'
During World War I, more than 880,000 men fighting for Great Britain died,
One of those who fell in this bloodbath of a war was John Kipling (1897–1915), the only son of writer and poet Rudyard Kipling and his American-born wife, Caroline Balestier. After both the Army and the Navy rejected John's attempts to enlist for reasons of shortsightedness, Kipling used his influence to place his son in the Army, where he was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Irish Guards.
In 1915, just after his 18th birthday, John died in the Battle of Loos in France. Though they conducted an extensive investigation, Kipling and his wife never located their son's body. Later, historians identified what they now believe to be his gravesite, though this issue remains a matter of debate.
An ardent supporter of the Empire and the British military, the post-war Kipling was understandably more filled with grief than patriotism. 'As a public man, he became much more angry and bitter,'
Portrait of Rudyard Kipling from the biography "Rudyard Kipling," 1895, by John Palmer.
Public Domain
Tombstone Verse From a Complicated Man
During his lifetime and afterward, Rudyard Kipling's novels, stories, and verse have attracted both garlands and brickbats from critics. Though both sides generally recognize his command of the English language, his attackers have labeled him an imperialist, a jingoist, and a racist. These tags can easily be tailored to fit the poet. '
Unfortunately for his detractors, Kipling and his works are a jumble of contradictions. The imperialist penned 'The Man Who Would Be King,' which contains criticisms of the British Empire; the jingoist wrote 'Recessional,' a rebuke to boasting and chauvinistic flag-waving; the racist composed 'Gunga Din,' the poem about the Indian bhisti (water-carrier) who died a hero while saving the life of a British soldier and so won these words as his garland of honor: 'You're a better man than I am, Gunga Din!'
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A similar contradiction occurs with 'Epitaphs of the War.' Kipling was an early and ardent supporter of the war against Germany. He helped popularize the use of 'Hun' to describe the Germans in his poem '
A 1915 photograph of John Kipling, from the Rudyard Kipling papers, University of Sussex Library, England.
Public Domain
The Boys of War
Here, for instance, are two voices: one belonging to a parent, the other to a dead son. Whether Kipling intended these as personal reflections on John's death will always be subject to debate. Surely the father who dearly loved his son and spent so much time trying to learn more about his final hours and the location of his body was at least thinking of John when he composed these two epitaphs:
My son was killed while laughing at some jest. I would I knew
What it was, and it might serve me in a time when jests are few.
I have slain none except my Mother. She
(Blessing her slayer) died of grief for me.
In several of these verses, Kipling reminds readers that many of the dead, like his own son, were just steps away from childhood. In '
On the first hour of my first day
In the front trench I fell.
(Children in boxes at a play
Stand up to watch it well.)
In '
Laughing through clouds, his milk-teeth still unshed,
Cities and men he smote from overhead.
His deaths delivered, he returned to play
Childlike, with childish things now put away.
A file photo of a WWI-era plane.
Shutterstock
Misfits
In this cemetery of sorrows, Kipling also made room for those who didn't fit into this world of artillery, guns, and gas. These people were separated by culture or temperament from the ravenous machine of battle and death that was WWI. Here were two who lost their lives to bullets fired by their comrades:
I could not look on death, which being known,
Men led me to him, blindfold and alone.
Faithless the watch that I kept; now I have none to keep.
I was slain because I slept; now I am slain I sleep.
Let no man reproach me again, whatever watch is unkept—
I sleep because I am slain. They slew me because I slept.
Outlanders
Other troops from the Empire fought and died in this conflict. In '
Prometheus brought down fire to men.
This brought up water.
The Gods are jealous—now, as then,
Giving no quarter.
Nor did the man who had spent so many years of his early life in India forget their troops who died on the Western Front:
The man in his own country prayed we know not to what Powers.
We pray Them to reward him for his bravery in ours.
A Vanishing of Differences
Class prejudices in Great Britain were still sharply practiced before the war, but as Kipling noted in '
A. 'I was a Have.' B.
'I was a 'have-not.''
(Together.) 'What hast thou given which I gave not.'
Some British officers brought a servant from home to the Western Front, termed a 'batman' from the game of cricket. Often the relationship between the two became stronger during this time of duress. In many cases, it blossomed into true appreciation and even allowed the officer to better lead the men in his command. We learn of this arrangement in '
We were together since the War began.
He was my servant—and the better man.
Relevance
The epitaphs of these combatants remind us of the costs of war. Two other poems Kipling included point to one of the perennial reasons for these wars and the accompanying suffering. Here is Kipling giving voice to '
I could not dig; I dared not rob;
Therefore I lied to please the mob.
Now all my lies are proved untrue
And I must face the men I slew.
What tale shall serve me here among
Mine angry and defrauded young?
One of the better-known inscriptions in this graveyard is '
If any question why we died,
Tell them, because our fathers lied.
In the excellent notes and commentary on 'Epitaphs of the War'
A cemetery employee walks between graves of American servicemen killed during WWI ahead of celebrations of the WWI centenary at the American Cemetery in Suresnes, on the outskirts of Paris, France, on Nov. 9, 2018.
Vadim Ghirda/AP
Kipling published 'Epitaphs of the War' in 1919. By then, the appalling casualty lists of the dead, wounded, and missing were known. Some called the Great War 'the war to end all wars.' They couldn't foresee what lay ahead: another world war, a multitude of lesser wars, and a century of communism, fascism, and the collapse of empires.
Kipling laments the personal costs of war. His 'Epitaphs' should act as a warning to all those who call for bombs and bullets instead of searching out every available option for peace.
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