Siegfried+Sassoon

If I were fierce, and bald, and short of breath, I'd live with scarlet Majors at the Base, And speed glum heroes up the line to death. You'd see me with my puffy petulant face, Guzzling and gulping in the best hotel, Reading the Roll of Honour. "Poor young chap," I'd say--"I used to know his father well; Yes, we've lost heavily in this last scrap." And when the war is done and youth stone dead, I'd toddle safely home and die--in bed.
 * Base Details (1918) **

**Suicide In The Trenches** (1918)  I knew a simple soldier boy Who grinned at life in empty joy, Slept soundly through the lonesome dark, And whistled early with the lark. In winter trenches, cowed and glum, With crumps and lice and lack of rum, He put a bullet through his brain. No one spoke of him again. You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye Who cheer when soldier lads march by, Sneak home and pray you’ll never know The hell where youth and laughter go.


 * Does it Matter? (1917) **

Does it matter?—losing your legs?... For people will always be kind, And you need not show that you mind <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">When the others come in after hunting <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">To gobble their muffins and eggs.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Does it matter?—losing your sight?... <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">There’s such splendid work for the blind; <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">And people will always be kind, <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">As you sit on the terrace remembering <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">And turning your face to the light.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Do they matter?—those dreams from the pit?... <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">You can drink and forget and be glad, <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">And people won’t say that you’re mad; For they’ll know you’ve fought for your country And no one will worry a bit. <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Suicide In The Trenches (1918) I knew a simple soldier boy Who grinned at life in empty joy, Slept soundly through the lonesome dark, And whistled early with the lark. In winter trenches, cowed and glum, With crumps and lice and lack of rum, He put a bullet through his brain. No one spoke of him again. You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye Who cheer when soldier lads march by, Sneak home and pray you’ll never know The hell where youth and laughter go.

**<span style="color: black; font-family: 'Garamond','serif';">Counter-Attack ****<span style="font-family: 'Garamond','serif';">(1918) **

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">We’d gained our first objective hours before
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">While dawn broke like a face with blinking eyes, ||
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Pallid, unshaved and thirsty, blind with smoke. ||
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Things seemed all right at first. We held their line, ||
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">With bombers posted, Lewis guns well placed, ||
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">And clink of shovels deepening the shallow trench. ||
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">The place was rotten with dead; green clumsy legs ||
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">High-booted, sprawled and grovelled along the saps ||
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">And trunks, face downward, in the sucking mud, ||
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Wallowed like trodden sand-bags loosely filled; ||
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">And naked sodden buttocks, mats of hair, ||
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Bulged, clotted heads slept in the plastering slime. ||
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">And then the rain began,—the jolly old rain! ||
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">A yawning soldier knelt against the bank, ||
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Staring across the morning blear with fog; ||
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">He wondered when the Allemands would get busy; ||
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">And then, of course, they started with five-nines ||
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Traversing, sure as fate, and never a dud. ||
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Mute in the clamour of shells he watched them burst ||
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Spouting dark earth and wire with gusts from hell, ||
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">While posturing giants dissolved in drifts of smoke. ||
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">He crouched and flinched, dizzy with galloping fear, ||
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Sick for escape,—loathing the strangled horror ||
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">And butchered, frantic gestures of the dead. ||
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">An officer came blundering down the trench: ||
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">‘Stand-to and man the fire-step!’ On he went... ||
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Gasping and bawling, ‘Fire-step ... counter-attack!’ ||
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Then the haze lifted. Bombing on the right ||
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Down the old sap: machine-guns on the left; ||
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">And stumbling figures looming out in front. ||
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">‘O Christ, they’re coming at us!’ Bullets spat, ||
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">And he remembered his rifle ... rapid fire... ||
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">And started blazing wildly ... then a bang ||
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Crumpled and spun him sideways, knocked him out ||
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">To grunt and wriggle: none heeded him; he choked ||
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">And fought the flapping veils of smothering gloom, ||
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Lost in a blurred confusion of yells and groans... ||
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Down, and down, and down, he sank and drowned, ||
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Bleeding to death. The counter-attack had failed. ||
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Down, and down, and down, he sank and drowned, ||
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Bleeding to death. The counter-attack had failed. ||