Counter-Attack and Other Poems | Page 4

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 ... rapid fire ...
And started blazing wildly ... then a bang
Crumpled and spun him
sideways, knocked him out
To grunt and wriggle: none heeded him;
he choked
And fought the flapping veils of smothering gloom,
Lost
in a blurred confusion of yells and groans ...
Down, and down, and
down, he sank and drowned,
Bleeding to death. The counter-attack
had failed.
THE REAR-GUARD
(Hindenburg Line, April 1917.)

Groping along the tunnel, step by step,
He winked his prying torch
with patching glare
From side to side, and sniffed the unwholesome
air.
Tins, boxes, bottles, shapes too vague to know,
A mirror smashed,
the mattress from a bed;
And he, exploring fifty feet below
The
rosy gloom of battle overhead.
Tripping, he grabbed the wall; saw some one lie
Humped at his feet,
half-hidden by a rug,
And stooped to give the sleeper's arm a tug.

"I'm looking for headquarters." No reply.
"God blast your neck!" (For
days he'd had no sleep.)
"Get up and guide me through this stinking
place."
Savage, he kicked a soft, unanswering heap,
And flashed his
beam across the livid face
Terribly glaring up, whose eyes yet wore

Agony dying hard ten days before;
And fists of fingers clutched a
blackening wound.
Alone he staggered on until he found
Dawn's ghost that filtered down
a shafted stair
To the dazed, muttering creatures underground
Who
hear the boom of shells in muffled sound.
At last, with sweat of
horror in his hair,
He climbed through darkness to the twilight air,

Unloading hell behind him step by step.
WIRERS
"Pass it along, the wiring party's going out"--
And yawning sentries
mumble, "Wirers going out,"
Unravelling; twisting; hammering
stakes with muffled thud,
They toil with stealthy haste and anger in
their blood.
The Boche sends up a flare. Black forms stand rigid there,
Stock-still
like posts; then darkness, and the clumsy ghosts Stride hither and
thither, whispering, tripped by clutching snare Of snags and tangles.
Ghastly dawn with vaporous coasts
Gleams desolate along the sky,

night's misery ended.
Young Hughes was badly hit; I heard him carried away,
Moaning at
every lurch; no doubt he'll die to-day.
But we can say the front-line
wire's been safely mended.
ATTACK
At dawn the ridge emerges massed and dun
In the wild purple of the
glowering sun,
Smouldering through spouts of drifting smoke that
shroud
The menacing scarred slope; and, one by one,
Tanks creep
and topple forward to the wire.
The barrage roars and lifts. Then,
clumsily bowed
With bombs and guns and shovels and battle-gear,

Men jostle and climb to meet the bristling fire.
Lines of grey,
muttering faces, masked with fear,
They leave their trenches, going
over the top,
While time ticks blank and busy on their wrists,
And
hope, with furtive eyes and grappling fists,
Flounders in mud. O Jesu,
make it stop!
DREAMERS
Soldiers are citizens of death's grey land,
Drawing no dividend from
time's to-morrows.
In the great hour of destiny they stand,
Each
with his feuds, and jealousies, and sorrows.
Soldiers are sworn to
action; they must win
Some flaming, fatal climax with their lives.

Soldiers are dreamers; when the guns begin
They think of firelit
homes, clean beds, and wives.
I see them in foul dug-outs, gnawed by rats,
And in the ruined
trenches, lashed with rain,
Dreaming of things they did with balls and
bats,
And mocked by hopeless longing to regain
Bank-holidays,
and picture shows, and spats,
And going to the office in the train.
HOW TO DIE

Dark clouds are smouldering into red
While down the craters
morning burns.
The dying soldier shifts his head
To watch the glory
that returns:
He lifts his fingers toward the skies
Where holy
brightness breaks in flame;
Radiance reflected in his eyes,
And on
his lips a whispered name.
You'd think, to hear some people talk,
That lads go West with sobs
and curses,
And sullen faces white as chalk,
Hankering for wreaths
and tombs and hearses.
But they've been taught the way to do it

Like Christian soldiers; not with haste
And shuddering groans; but
passing through it
With due regard for decent taste.
THE EFFECT
"The effect of our bombardment was terrific. One man
told me he had
never seen so many dead before."--War Correspondent.
"He'd never seen so many dead before."
They sprawled in yellow
daylight while he swore
And gasped and lugged his everlasting load

Of bombs along what once had been a road.
"How peaceful are the
dead."
Who put that silly gag in some one's head?
"He'd never seen so many dead before."
The lilting words danced up
and down his brain,
While corpses jumped and capered in the rain.

No, no; he wouldn't count them any more ...
The dead have done with
pain:
They've choked; they can't come back to life again.
When Dick was killed last week he looked like that,
Flapping along
the fire-step like a fish,
After the blazing crump had knocked him
flat ...
_"How many