THE YOUNG GUARD – World War I Poems & Author's Memoirs from The Great War. E. W. Hornung
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than a bit cut off;
A furlong or so down a green incline
The fire-trench curls in the trough.
Joy cannot see it —it's in the bed
Of a river of poison that brims instead.
He can only hear—a cough!
Nothing to do for the companies there —
Nothing but waiting now,
While the Gas rolls up on the balmy air,
And a small bird cheeps on a bough.
All of a sudden the sky seems full
Of trusses of lighted cotton-wool
And the enemy's big bow-wow!
The firmament cracks with his airy mines,
And an interlacing hail
Threshes the clover between our lines,
As a vile invisible flail.
And the trench has become a mighty vice
That holds us, in skins of molten ice,
For the vapours that fringe the veil.
It's coming—in billowy swirls—as smoke
From the roof a world on fire.
It—comes! And a lad with a heart of oak
Knows only that heart's desire!
His masked lips whimper but one dear name—
And so is he lost to inward shame
That he thrills at the shout: "Re-tire!"
Whose is the order, thrice renewed?
Ensign Joy cannot tell:
Only, that way lies Ermyntrude,
And the other way this hell!
Three men leap from the poisoned fosse,
Three men plunge from the parados,
And—their—officer—as well!
Now, as he flies at their flying heels,
He awakes to his deep disgrace,
And the yawning pit of his shame reveals
A way of saving his face:
He twirls his stick to a shepherd's crook,
To trip and bring one of them back to book,
As though he'd been giving chase!
He got back gasping—"They'd too much start!"
"I'd've shot 'em at sight! " said Wren.
"That was your job, Sir, if you'd the 'eart—
But it wouldn't've been you, then.
I pray my Lord I may live to see
A firing-party in front o" them three!"
(That's what he said to the men.)
Now, Joy and Wren, of Company B,
Are a favourite firm of mine;
And the way they reinforced A, C, and D
Was perhaps not exactly fine,
But it meant a good deal both to Wren and Joy —
That grim, gaunt man, but that desperate boy!—
And it didn't weaken the Line.
"Not a bad effort of yours, my lad,"
The Major deigned to declare.
"My Sergeant's plan, Sir "—
"And that's not bad— But you've lost that ribbon you wear?" "It — must have been — eaten away by the Gas!" "Well—ribbons are ribbons—but don't be an ass! It's better to do than dare."
Dare! He has dared to desert his post—
But he daren't acknowledge his sin!
He has dared to face Wren with a lying boast —
But Wren is not taken in.
None sings his praises so long and loud —
With look so loving and loyal and proud!
But the boy sees under his skin.
Daily and gaily he wrote to his wife,
Who had dropped the beatified droll
And was writing to him on the marvel of Life,
Which illumed and exalted her soul.
Her courage was high, though she mentioned its height:
But he saw not a joint in her Armour of Light,
Nor the bee in her Aureole.
And never a helm had the lad we know
As he stole on his nightly raids,
With a brace of his Blighters, an N.C.O.
And a bagful of hand-grenades.
But the way that he rattled and harried the Hun—
The deeds he did dare, and the risks he would run—
Were the gossip of two Brigades:
How he'd stand stock-still as the trunk of a tree,
With his face tucked down out of sight,
When a star-shell burst and the other three
Fell prone in the frightening light;
How the German sandbags, that made them quake,
Were the only cover he cared to take,
But he'd eavesdrop there all night. . . .
Machine-guns, tapping a phrase in Morse,
Grew hot on a random quest,
And swarms of bullets buzzed down the course
Yet, that last night . . .
They had just set off,
When he pitched on his face with a smothered cough
And a row of holes in his chest.
He left a letter. It saved the lives
Of the three who ran from the Gas;
A small enclosure alone survives,
In Battersea, under glass:
Only the ribbon he tore from his breast
On the day he turned and ran with the rest,
And lied with a lip of brass!
But the letters they wrote about the boy,
From the Brigadier to the men!
They would "never forget dear Mr. Joy,"
Nor look on his like again.
Ermyntrude read them with dry, proud eye.
There was only one letter that made her cry.
It was from Sergeant Wren:
"There never was such a fearless man,
Or one so beloved as he.
He was always up to some daring plan,
Or some treat for his men and me.
There wasn't his match when he went away;
But since he got back, there has not been a day
But what he has earned a V.C." . . .
A cynical story? That's not my view.
The years since he fell are twain.
What were his chances of coming through?
Which of his friends remain?
But Ermyntrude's training a splendid boy
Twenty years younger than Ensign Joy.
On balance, a