Rudyard Kipling's Garden of Gethsemane

In a few days, on 11th November to be precise, it will be the 90th anniversary of the armistice ending the First World War. Many poems have been written about the bloody horrors of this Great War and of the rat and louse infested trenches; and several poems from the World War I poets have been featured from time to time on this blog.
Poet-in-Residence will mark the day by visiting the Poets Against War website (see sidebar link) and spending some quiet time reading and contemplating some of the 30,000 poems posted there by peace-seeking poets from all over the world. Some 20,000 of these Poets Against War poems have been delivered to the White House as a protest against George W Bush's illegal invasion of Iraq.
John Kipling, the son of Rudyard Kipling, was killed in the Battle of Loos on 27th September 1915. The following poem takes its title from the name of the garden at the foot of the west slope of the Mount of Olives where Judas Iscariot is said to have betrayed his good friend and mentor Jesus Christ.
Picardy, in the north of France, was in an area of heavy fighting and the deployment of gas for the first time in 1915 as a weapon. During this 'war to end all wars' as it was called some 9 million soldiers, or more correctly civilians in military uniform, were killed and more than 20 million were wounded.
In the poem the faraway voice of John Kipling is heard from beyond Picardy, from no less a place than Gethsemane, the ultimate place of betrayal. In truth millions of young men duly armed with messianic zeal 'Your Country Needs You!' on both sides were betrayed by the unbridled malfeasance of incompetent politicians, corrupt industrialists, greedy bankers, jingoistic newspaper editors and warmongers, and duly marched like cattle to the dehumanising and unimagined slaughter fields; the open graves waiting greedily between the trenches.

Gethsemane 1914-18

The Garden called Gethsemane
In Picardy it was,
And there the people came to see
The English soldiers pass.
We used to pass - we used to pass
Or halt, as it might be,
And ship our masks in case of gas
Beyond Gethsemane.

The Garden called Gethsemane,
It held a pretty lass,
But all the time she talked to me
I prayed my cup might pass.
The officer sat on the chair,
The men lay on the grass,
And all the time we halted there
I prayed my cup might pass.

It didn't pass - it didn't pass -
It didn't pass from me.
I drank it when we met the gas
Beyond Gethsemane.

----
Rudyard Kipling (1865 - 1936)