from the Battle of the Somme

Below is a poem written by Second Lieutenant William Berridge of the 6th Battalion, Somerset Light Infantry, on the morning of 18 August 1916 during the Battle of the Somme during the First World War. His poem reflected the prevalent belief among British infantrymen that there was a meaning and plan to the vicious slaughter they experienced everyday. Berridge’s poem, written in the midst of the catastrophic Battle of the Somme, is a call to courage, duty, and faith in the sovereignty of God that has largely been lost among today’s weak and soft men.

God, wheresoe’er Thou may’st be found

    And whosoe’er Thou art,

Grant in the Scheme of Things that we

    May play a worthy part;

And give, to help us on the way,

    An all-enduring heart.

We know Thou watchest from above

    This fantasy of woe;

And, whatsoever pain or loss

    We here may undergo,

Let us in this be comforted –

    None from Thy sight can go.

Sometimes in folly we upon

    Thy Name profanely call,

And grumble at our destiny

    Because our minds are small,

And so we cannot understand

    The Mind that ruleth all.

Grant us to see and learn and know

    The Greatness of Thy Will,

That each one his allotted task

    May grapple with, until

We hear at last Thy Perfect Voice

    Budding us ‘Peace, be still.’

That very day, at 2:45PM, Berridge participated in an over-the-top assault on German positions. The historian Martin Gilbert, in his book on the Battle of the Somme, recounts: ‘As the infantrymen entered the German trenches they bayoneted or shot those who refused to surrender. An attack was then made on two German machine-gun posts that continued to harass the attackers from one end of the German trench, and were defended by a heavy trench-mortar barrage. The machine-gun posts were overrun and the trench secured. Ninety Germans were taken prisoners, but Berridge, the first man to enter the trench, was mortally wounded by a sniper. He died the next day.’