Gilbert Frankau

“ As the man with the blood-red bayonet spoke up for the mate of his choice.
“You know what it’s like in the listening-post, with the very candles aflare,
Their bullets smacking the sandbags, our Vickers combing your hair;
How your ears and your eyes get jumpy, till each known tuft that you scan
Moves and crawls in the shadows till you’d almost swear it was man.
You know how you peer and snuff at the night when the Northeast gas winds blow.”
“By the One who made us and maimed us,” quoth lower Valhalla, “we know!” ”

“ He was forty yards from the Bosches when, sudden as Hell, there came
The crash of a dozen machine guns, the orange spurts of their flame,
And Joe stood up in the whistling spray to try and fathom their game. ”

“ As we know how the hand at the helmet cloth may tarry seconds too long,
When the very life of the front-line trench is staked on the beat of a gong.
By the four you slew, by the case he smote, by the red gas cloud and the green,
We pass your mate for the Endless Smoke and the beer of the free Canteen.”
In the lower hall of Valhalla, with the heroes of no renown,
With our nameless dead of the Marne and the Aisne, of Mons and of Wipers town,
With the men who killed ere they died for us, sits Rifleman Joseph Brown.
GILBERT FRANKAU.
18-6-16. ”