Did his utmost to reduce it,

Threw away a pair of bedsocks,

And a tie his aunt had sent him,

Sighed to leave his bed behind him,

Wrought by Private Woggs, his batman,

Wrought from bits of ration boxes,

And a scrap of wire netting.

Then at last one summer evening,

In July of 1916,

Tiadatha and the Dudshires