General Description of the Line, and: Bear in Mind, and: Summary of Intelligence, and: The Christmas Truce

General Description of the Line

The first line generally consists of two parts, one an obstacle, and is continuous except for narrow inconspicuous passages that may serve as exits.

The supporting line should always be constructed as a second line in the event that the first line is lost. It may or may not be continuous—it is preferable that it should be.

There will be a certain number of points the loss of which would seriously endanger the lines. These must be carefully concealed for maximum effect, and should be protected by an obstacle which may consist of a line.

As to their number or relative position with regard to the first line, subsequent lines should be constructed so that the whole of the first line can be swept with machine gun fire.

Bear in Mind

31 July 1917

British Trench Map Sheet: 20 SW 4 Bixschoote U.21.c.4.6

the contours on this map are incorrect. The river’s meander as shown just north of Ruisseau and Signal Farms does not exist. These lines in black drawn from the weirs downstream offer the general shape of the country but must not be regarded as accurate.

These poems, from a cycle titled Salient, center on two poles: the appalling World War I battle of Third Ypres, or Passchendaele (1917), and the Chöd ritual of Tibetan Buddhism. They are set in the Ypres Salient in Flanders, an eastward bulge in the Western Front that was held by the British Armies from 1914 to 1918 and was the site of four major battles, including Passchendaele. The map coordinates refer to trench map locations in that sector. The poems draw on and incorporate materials from British World War I manuals and maps, and translations and sixteenth-century descriptions of Tibetan tantric rituals and figures, such as the wrathful Tibetan goddess Palden Lhamo. These include, in order of appearance, a British War Office publication on the tactics and requirements of trench warfare, circa 1917 and reprinted in 1997 by the Imperial War Museum; notes written by hand in the margins of a trench map printed in 1915, and quoted in Peter Chasseaud’s Artillery’s Astrologers: A History of British Survey and Mapping on The Western Front 1914–1918; iconographic descriptions of Palden Lhamo from René de Nebesky-Wojkowitz’s Oracles and Demons of Tibet, first published in 1956; and text from a seventeenth-century manual for performing a Tibetan rite from Sarah Harding’s 2003 translation of Machik’s Complete Explanation: Clarifying the Meaning of Chöd.

Summary of Intelligence

Night of 24 October 1917

British Trench Map Sheet: 28 NE 1 Zonnebeke

Patrols reported the goddess Paldan Lhamo in the vicinity of D.12.a.2.9 at 0245. She is sometimes called Queen of the Sickles or Great Life Mistress. The body was dark blue, lean, with one face, four hands, two feet, wearing ox-skin and a diadem of bone ornament and ash. Spattered with specks of fat, she carried a sack of diseases, a trident, and a pair of dice. The patrol saw she and hell arise from the turquoise seed-syllable shell, and working parties tonight, despite anticipated rain, will dig, linking her deep, round footprints across the featureless terrain.

The Christmas Truce

25 December 1914

British Trench Map Sheet: 28 SW 4 Ploegsteert U.15.a.1.0

The goddesses go to the place of hell and at the sight of them the hell-laborers delay their torture work, and beings on both sides, all of us, are instantly freed from anger and the results of anger, such as the sufferings of rain and cold, hailstorms and broken sandbags, and being pulled apart and chopped up. The burning ground becomes lapis lazuli and the hungry ghosts are sated, the animals no longer suffer, the demigods are no longer jealous of one another, and the gods no longer fear loss of status and so shred their maps. All needs and desires wash away...