Shut the door, Jameson, shut the blasted door—
The whole road's blocked as far as Elverdinghe.
Four Bridge would hold you up an hour or more
So don't go crashing up to-night, old thing—
What weather! Hall-marked Flanders wind and rain!
Come on inside. My groom will take your mare
Round to the smithy on the Market Square.
Let's have a dekko at the carte again.
It's a posh lunch to-day, Suzanne's a vision,
And the room's lousy with the old Division.
Just now MacMartin stopped me on the street
With news from Amiens. (And Marguerite
Sends you her love. Oh, it's a bonzer war
In cushy billets at the Poisson D'Or!)
Mac is the same old swinger—he "mistook"
His indicated route, and lost his bunch,
Jumped on a tender down from Hazebrouck
And blew in here with Willy Braid for lunch.
They're in the bar with Tupper, back from Blighty,
Capping his yarns of Baths and Aphrodite.
Yes—I go back at dawn. We're on the ridge
Over the Steenbeek by the corduroy bridge,
Past the big pill-box with the double cleft
To the main route stumps on the sky-line—then half-left.
It's about an hour from the lorry-stand, unless
You take the duckboards near the R.E. shaft.
Quicker that way, of course, but badly strafed.
You'll see a stranded tank there—that's the Mess.
What is it like now? Smelly, Jim, and muddy—
Under restraint, I call it fairly bloody.
Nothing like Nieuport. Why, it seems an age—
And yet the year is barely four months older,
Since we got rounds up on the narrow-gauge
And visited Belgian outposts in the polder.
That was the life, old Jimmy! Now it's a black
And gory business, slogging away by pack—
Most of it salvage—while the five-nines crump
Our half-drowned hairies staggering from the dump.
(Well, here's luck, Jim! Gone dry? Why, I'd forgotten—
Another brand, Suzanne! This sweet stuff's rotten.)
There's a new mob to-night about the town—
The whole back area's stiff with guns and troops,
And Proven road's chock-full with "heavy groups"
From six-inch up. They've put the tape-lines down
And moved the forward dumps to Poelcapelle.
Battle-headquarters' somewhere near the Bower,
All day and night we're brassing off like hell—
It's going to be a "Brock's" at zero hour!
The Hun's not loafing though—he's getting windy,
Listen! Even from here you can hear the shindy.
Two nights ago we caught it hell-for-leather.
The new relief had just gone on ahead,
Leaving the altered signal "green-over-red."
There was a little mist, and some soft weather—
All quiet at nine o'clock. Hardly a sound.
I took my gum-boots for a last look round.
Nothing was doing beside the usual cracks
Of long-range shrapnel on the duckboard tracks,
And a crooning eight-inch, humping along a load
Meant for the siding on the Pilkem road.
Clusters of Very lights along the line
Flickered and plunged. They helped my eyes to mark
Our barrage-lines across the battery-arc.
The pools were hoared with silver in the shine.
Peaceful it was. I strolled and smoked and stared—
There came a quickened rumble in the East,
Down the battalion front the lights increased.
Machine guns raved and stuttered. A rocket flared—
Scarlet and golden-rain spouted and spread,
Flares and skysigns and stars, and
Green-over-red!
Watch for it, Sentry! There again. Yes!
Battery-Action! S.O.S.!
Shadowy man after man leaps to a gun.
Flash from the centre—five then flash as one.
All round are flashes, lighting the livid
Faces of straining gun-crews.
Vicious and vivid
Fire spirals and cataracts—knives, spikes
Of fire stabbing the dark. Batters and strikes
On the ears the unutterable, profound
Debauchery of sound—
The roar and clutter and whinny—sustained, obscene
As if the dead beasts of the Pleistocene,
Spawned of the essence
Of ravaged earth's womb and her churned putrescence
Were howling over the mud their lusts unclean.
Then—well, when every hollow's a belching mass
Of wrangling guns, guns bellowing to guns—
You cannot tell a burst of ours from the Huns'—
Suddenly through the cordite I smelt the gas.
Down went the warning through the roar and screech—
The spitting splinters ploughed us like a squall,
Half-blinded gunners wrestled with the breech,
Gas-helmeted, smoke-drenched—you know it all—
Then the five-nines began. A salvo came,
And Number Four went up in a gust of flame.
I thought the whole of the line was smashed and finished—
And then, through the reek of the fog and the dropping mire,
From the right flank, steady and undiminished,
Came the assuring crashes of section-fire,
Timed and checked and re-laid. We groped and plunged
To pull the stricken out. Still droned the steady
Voice of the sergeants at the "set and ready."
Number One, fire! The muzzle flamed and lunged.
Number Two, fire!
By God, those chaps are stunners!
Search France, you'll find no better than my gunners.