by
Amy Lowell
Guarded within the old red wall's embrace,
Marshalled like soldiers in gay company,
The tulips stand arrayed. Here infantry
Wheels out into the sunlight. What bold grace
Sets off their tunics, white with crimson lace!
Here are platoons of gold-frocked cavalry,
With scarlet sabres tossing in the eye
Of purple batteries, every gun in place.
Forward they come, with flaunting colours spread,
With torches burning, stepping out in time
To some quick, unheard march. Our ears are dead,
We cannot catch the tune. In pantomime
Parades that army. With our utmost powers
We hear the wind stream through a bed of flowers.
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by
Siegfried Sassoon
‘FALL in! Now get a move on.’ (Curse the rain.)
We splash away along the straggling village,
Out to the flat rich country, green with June...
And sunset flares across wet crops and tillage,
Blazing with splendour-patches. (Harvest soon,
Up in the Line.) ‘Perhaps the War’ll be done
‘By Christmas-Day. Keep smiling then, old son.’
Here’s the Canal: it’s dusk; we cross the bridge.
‘Lead on there, by platoons.’ (The Line’s a-glare
With shell-fire through the poplars; distant rattle
Of rifles and machine-guns.) ‘Fritz is there!
‘Christ, ain’t it lively, Sergeant? Is’t a battle?’
More rain: the lightning blinks, and thunder rumbles.
‘There’s over-head artillery!’ some chap grumbles.
What’s all this mob at the cross-roads? Where are the guides?...
‘Lead on with number One.’ And off they go.
‘Three minute intervals.’ (Poor blundering files,
Sweating and blindly burdened; who’s to know
If death will catch them in those two dark miles?)
More rain. ‘Lead on, Head-quarters.’ (That’s the lot.)
‘Who’s that?... Oh, Sergeant-Major, don’t get shot!
‘And tell me, have we won this war or not?’
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by
Barry Tebb
Shell-shocked from Korea
A grenade that left him
The platoon’s only survivor,
Put him in Stanley Royd
For thirty years.
He tailored there
And out on weekend leaves
He made and mended
Everybody’s clothes,
Crying copiously
While he sewed.
When they cleared out
The chronic cases
Uncle Bob came home,
Shopping for Edna,
Doing the garden;
When the lodger left
Without a word, the police
Searched his room,
The garden shed,
Even the chest freezer.
Oesophageal cancer
Is very final.
John, his son, waiting
To take the house,
Departed for a month’s fishing
Until it was all over.
As a last rite
They put him in the LGI
But I spoke to the houseman privately,
Pulling together the bits of a life
Wholly given over to others,
Fallen comrades, Edna,
The grandchildren
His pension went on.
The houseman agreed to speak
To the surgeon privately.
Edna went first and
At her funeral John,
In frustrated fury,
Hit him over the head
With an empty fish tank.
When secondaries started
I was not told
And in the hospice
He barely lasted
His first weekend.
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by
Robert William Service
My job is done; my rhymes are ranked and ready,
My word-battalions marching verse by verse;
Here stanza-companies are none too steady;
There print-platoons are weak, but might be worse.
And as in marshalled order I review them,
My type-brigades, unfearful of the fray,
My eyes that seek their faults are seeing through them
Immortal visions of an epic day.
It seems I'm in a giant bowling-alley;
The hidden heavies round me crash and thud;
A spire snaps like a pipe-stem in the valley;
The rising sun is like a ball of blood.
Along the road the "fantassins" are pouring,
And some are gay as fire, and some steel-stern. . . .
Then back again I see the red tide pouring,
Along the reeking road from Hebuterne.
And once again I seek Hill Sixty-Seven,
The Hun lines grey and peaceful in my sight;
When suddenly the rosy air is riven --
A "coal-box" blots the "boyou" on my right.
Or else to evil Carnoy I am stealing,
Past sentinels who hail with bated breath;
Where not a cigarette spark's dim revealing
May hint our mission in that zone of death.
I see across the shrapnel-seeded meadows
The jagged rubble-heap of La Boiselle;
Blood-guilty Fricourt brooding in the shadows,
And Thiepval's chateau empty as a shell.
Down Albert's riven streets the moon is leering;
The Hanging Virgin takes its bitter ray;
And all the road from Hamel I am hearing
The silver rage of bugles over Bray.
Once more within the sky's deep sapphire hollow
I sight a swimming Taube, a fairy thing;
I watch the angry shell flame flash and follow
In feather puffs that flick a tilted wing;
And then it fades, with shrapnel mirror's flashing;
The flashes bloom to blossoms lily gold;
The batteries are rancorously crashing,
And life is just as full as it can hold.
Oh spacious days of glory and of grieving!
Oh sounding hours of lustre and of loss!
Let us be glad we lived you, still believing
The God who gave the cannon gave the Cross.
Let us be sure amid these seething passions,
The lusts of blood and hate our souls abhor:
The Power that Order out of Chaos fashions
Smites fiercest in the wrath-red forge of War. . . .
Have faith! Fight on! Amid the battle-hell
Love triumphs, Freedom beacons, all is well.
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