THE INFANTRYMAN.

The gunner rides on horseback, he lives in luxury,

The sapper has his dug-out as cushy as can be,

The flying man's a sportsman, but his home's a long way back,

In painted tent or straw-spread barn or cosy little shack;

Gunner and sapper and flying man (and each to his job, say I)

Have tickled the Hun with mine or gun or bombed him from on high,

But the quiet work, and the dirty work, since ever the War began

Is the work that never shows at all, the work of the infantryman.

The guns can pound the villages and smash the trenches in,

And the Hun is fain for home again when the T.M.B.'s begin,

And the Vickers gun is a useful one to sweep a parapet,

But the real work is the work that's done with bomb and bayonet.

Load him down from heel to crown with tools and grub and kit,

He's always there where the fighting is—he's there unless he's hit;

Over the mud and the blasted earth he goes where the living can;

He's in at the death while he yet has breath, the British infantryman!

Trudge and slip on the shell-hole's lip, and fall in the clinging mire—

Steady in front, go steady! Close up there! Mind the wire!

Double behind where the pathways wind! Jump clear of the ditch, jump clear!

Lost touch at the back? Oh, halt in front! and duck when the shells come near!

Carrying parties all night long, all day in a muddy trench,

With your feet in the wet and your head in the rain and the sodden khaki's stench!

Then over the top in the morning, and onward all you can—

This is the work that wins the War, the work of the infantryman.

"A woman has been fined £10 for chipping lyddite out of a shell which had been over-filled by means of a screwdriver."—Evening Paper.

We protest against our newspapers being allowed to inform the enemy in this way of our methods of filling shells.