Counter-Attack and Other Poems | Page 3

who have given the lovely earth?over to hideous defilement and the youths of all nations?to carnage...
Sometimes in this book Sassoon fails to express himself?properly. This fact is, I think, a tribute to his?sincerity. For his earlier work very clearly displays?his technical proficiency. But here what can he do??Indignation chokes and strangles him. He claws often?enough at unsatisfactory words, dislocates his?sentences, tumbles out his images as if he would pulp the?makers of war beneath them. Very rarely does he?attain to the poignant simplicity of 'The Hawthorn?Tree' or the detached irony of 'Does it Matter?'
Can he then see nothing else in war? I remember?him once turning to me and saying suddenly apropos?of certain exalt�� poems in my 'Ardours and?Endurances': 'Yes, I see all that and I agree with?you, Robert. War has made me. I think I am a man now?as well as a poet. You have said the things well?enough. Now let us nevermore say another word of?whatever little may be good in war for the individual?who has a heart to be steeled.'
I remember I nodded, for further acquaintance with?war inclines me to his opinion.
'Let no one ever,' he continued, 'from henceforth?say a word in any way countenancing war. It is dangerous?even to speak of how here and there the individual?may gain some hardship of soul by it. For war?is hell and those who institute it are criminals. Were?there anything to say for it, it should not be said for?its spiritual disasters far outweigh any of its advantages.'
For myself this is the truth. War doesn't ennoble:?it degrades. The words of Barbusse placed at the beginning?of this book should be engraved over the doors?of every war office of every State in the world.
While war is a possibility man is little better than?a savage and civilisation the mere moments of rest?between a succession of nightmares. It is to help to?end this horror that Siegfried Sassoon and the many?others who feel like him have continued to fight as?after the publication of this book he fought in Palestine?and in France.
You civilized persons who read this book not only as?a poet but as a soldier I beg of you not to turn from it.?Read it again and again till its words become part of?your consciousness. It was written by a man for mankind's?sake, that 'that which is humane' might no more be an?empty phrase, that the words of Blake might blossom?to a new meaning--
Thou art a man, God is no more,?Thine own humanity learn to adore.
New York City,?Nov. 20th-23rd.?ROBERT NICHOLS.
PRELUDE: THE TROOPS
Dim, gradual thinning of the shapeless gloom?Shudders to drizzling daybreak that reveals?Disconsolate men who stamp their sodden boots?And turn dulled, sunken faces to the sky?Haggard and hopeless. They, who have beaten down?The stale despair of night, must now renew?Their desolation in the truce of dawn,?Murdering the livid hours that grope for peace.
Yet these, who cling to life with stubborn hands,?Can grin through storms of death and find a gap?In the clawed, cruel tangles of his defence.?They march from safety, and the bird-sung joy?Of grass-green thickets, to the land where all?Is ruin, and nothing blossoms but the sky?That hastens over them where they endure?Sad, smoking, flat horizons, reeking woods,?And foundered trench-lines volleying doom for doom.
O my brave brown companions, when your souls?Flock silently away, and the eyeless dead?Shame the wild beast of battle on the ridge,?Death will stand grieving in that field of war?Since your unvanquished hardihood is spent.?And through some mooned Valhalla there will pass?Battalions and battalions, scarred from hell;?The unreturning army that was youth;?The legions who have suffered and are dust.
COUNTER-ATTACK
We'd gained our first objective hours before?While dawn broke like a face with blinking eyes,?Pallid, unshaved and thirsty, blind with smoke.?Things seemed all right at first. We held their line,?With bombers posted, Lewis guns well placed,?And clink of shovels deepening the shallow trench.
The place was rotten with dead; green clumsy legs?High-booted, sprawled and grovelled along the saps;?And trunks, face downward, in the sucking mud,?Wallowed like trodden sand-bags loosely filled;?And naked sodden buttocks, mats of hair,?Bulged, clotted heads slept in the plastering slime.?And then the rain began,--the jolly old rain!
A yawning soldier knelt against the bank,?Staring across the morning blear with fog;?He wondered when the Allemands would get busy;?And then, of course, they started with five-nines?Traversing, sure as fate, and never a dud.?Mute in the clamour of shells he watched them burst?Spouting dark earth and wire with gusts from hell,?While posturing giants dissolved in drifts of smoke.?He crouched and flinched, dizzy with galloping fear,?Sick for escape,--loathing the strangled horror?And butchered, frantic gestures of the dead.
An officer came blundering down the trench:?"Stand-to and man the fire-step!" On he went ...?Gasping and bawling, "Fire-step ... counter-attack!"
Then the haze lifted. Bombing on the right?Down the old sap: machine-guns on the left;?And stumbling figures looming out in front.?"O Christ, they're coming at us!" Bullets spat,?And he remembered his rifle ...