“One Red Burial Blent”
The Germans are getting up to all the tricks of the trade so far as making themselves secure against infantry or shell fire is concerned. At first they didn’t seem to mind what happened, and were always on the move just to walk over us, but when they found that it took two to make a bargain in the walking-over line they began to get more cautious, and now they get into holes in the ground that would make you think you had gone out rabbit-hunting if it weren’t for the size of the game when you catch them. Their trenches are mighty deep, and you can’t always say rightly what’s in them. There was a chap of the Warwicks who went peeping into one of these holes the other day, and before he knew what to think he found himself looking down the muzzle of a German rifle. He got out of the way with only a little nick in the arm, but he might have lost his life. They had the dickens of a job to ferret that German out of his place, but they did get him out, though it was only to put him in again, as he wouldn’t surrender, and his pit came in handy for a grave: Gunner Hughes, of the Royal Field Artillery.
[XIII. GALLANT DEEDS]
And gentlemen in England, now a-bed,
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here;
And hold their manhoods cheap, whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s Day.
Shakespeare’s “Henry V.”
They went with songs to the battle, they were young,
Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow,
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted;
They fell with their faces to the foe.
Laurence Binyon’s “For the Fallen.”
When we got the order to retire I found that both my boots were full of blood. When I took them off I found that my feet had swollen and there were two big holes in my heels: Private E. Young.