Counter-Attack and Other Poems | Page 4

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 dead? As many as ever you wish.?Don't count 'em; they're too many.?Who'll buy my nice fresh corpses, two a penny?"_
TWELVE MONTHS AFTER
Hullo! here's my platoon, the lot I had last year.?"The war'll be over soon."
"What 'opes?"