Drummer Hodge

I heard this poem last night in a movie (The History Boys). One point made about it was that, in these South African campaigns, common soldiers were seen for the first time as individuals worthy of recognition. Until then, throughout military history, every common soldier had been the Unknown Soldier. Hodges may have been buried “uncoffined” in a mass grave but he had a name. Previously, private companies simply swept up the bones from battlegrounds and made them into fertilizer.

I assume this poem refers to the Zulu Wars. Surely there were no drummers in the Boer War.

Drummer Hodge ~Thomas Hardy

They throw in Drummer Hodge, to rest
Uncoffined – just as found:
His landmark is a kopje-crest
That breaks the veldt around;
And foreign constellations west
Each night above his mound.

Young Hodge the Drummer never knew –
Fresh from his Wessex home –
The meaning of the broad Karoo,
The Bush, the dusty loam,
And why uprose to nightly view
Strange stars amid the gloam.

Yet portion of that unknown plain
Will Hodge forever be;
His homely Northern breast and brain
Grow to some Southern tree,
And strange-eyed constellation reign
His stars eternally.