DOES it matter?--losing your legs?...

For people will always be kind,

And you need not show that you mind

When the others come in after hunting

To gobble their muffins and eggs.

Does it matter?--losing your sight?...

There's such splendid work for the blind;

And people will always be kind,

As you sit on the terrace remembering

And turning your face to the light.

Do they matter?--those dreams from the pit?...

You can drink and forget and be glad,

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.

'FALL in! Now get a move on.' (Curse the rain.)

We splash away along the straggling village,

Out to the flat rich country, green with June...

And sunset flares across wet crops and tillage,

Blazing with splendour-patches. (Harvest soon,

Up in the Line.) 'Perhaps the War'll be done

'By Christmas-Day. Keep smiling then, old son.'

Here's the Canal: it's dusk; we cross the bridge.

'Lead on there, by platoons.' (The Line's a-glare

With shell-fire through the poplars; distant rattle

Of rifles and machine-guns.) 'Fritz is there!

'Christ, ain't it lively, Sergeant? Is't a battle?'

More rain: the lightning blinks, and thunder rumbles.

'There's over-head artillery!' some chap grumbles.

What's all this mob at the cross-roads? Where are the guides?...

'Lead on with number One.' And off they go.

'Three minute intervals.' (Poor blundering files,

Sweating and blindly burdened; who's to know

If death will catch them in those two dark miles?)

More rain. 'Lead on, Head-quarters.' (That's the lot.)

'Who's that?... Oh, Sergeant-Major, don't get shot!

'And tell me, have we won this war or not?'

Thiepval
by
Sir William Orpen

GROPING along the tunnel, step by step,

He winked his prying torch with patching glare

From side to side, and sniffed the unwholesome air.

Tins, boxes, bottles, shapes too vague to know;

A mirror smashed, the mattress from a bed;

And he, exploring fifty feet below

The rosy gloom of battle overhead.

Tripping, he grabbed the wall; saw some one lie

Humped at his feet, half-hidden by a rug,

And stooped to give the sleeper's arm a tug.

'I'm looking for headquarters.' No reply.

'God blast your neck!' (For days he'd had no sleep,)

'Get up and guide me through this stinking place.'

Savage, he kicked a soft, unanswering heap,

And flashed his beam across the livid face

Terribly glaring up, whose eyes yet wore

Agony dying hard ten days before;

And fists of fingers clutched a blackening wound.

Alone he staggered on until he found

Dawn's ghost that filtered down a shafted stair

To the dazed, muttering creatures underground

Who hear the boom of shells in muffled sound.

At last, with sweat of horror in his hair,

He climbed through darkness to the twilight air,

Unloading hell behind him step by step.

After his stay at Craiglockhart Hospital, Siegfried threw his Military Cross (see biography section) into the Mersey river while waiting in Liverpool to find out what his commander's were going to do about his open letter titled "A Soldier's Declaration" in which he denounced the war. His commanders later responded by having him declared temporarily insane. This effectively prevented him from getting a fair hearing and also cut him off from his men. Eventually Sassoon relented and was allowed to return to the front where he was later wounded.

I AM banished from the patient men who fight

     They smote my heart to pity, built my pride.

     Shoulder to aching shoulder, side by side,

     They trudged away from life's broad wealds of light.

     Their wrongs were mine; and ever in my sight

     They went arrayed in honour. But they died,--

     Not one by one: and mutinous I cried

     To those who sent them out into the night.

     The darkness tells how vainly I have striven

     To free them from the pit where they must dwell

     In outcast gloom convulsed and jagged and riven

     By grappling guns. Love drove me to rebel.

     Love drives me back to grope with them through hell;

     And in their tortured eyes I stand forgiven.

Soldiers are citizens of death's grey land,

    Drawing no dividend from time's to-morrows.

In the great hour of destiny they stand,

    Each with his feuds, and jealousies, and sorrows.

Soldiers are sworn to action; they must win

    Some flaming, fatal climax with their lives.

Soldiers are dreamers; when the guns begin

    They think of firelit homes, clean beds, and wives.

I see them in foul dugouts, gnawed by rats,

    And in the ruined trenches, lashed with rain.

Dreaming of things they did with balls and bats,

    And mocked by hopeless longing to regain

Bank-holidays, and picture shows, and spats,

    And going to the office in the train.

Assault on Bellau Wood
by
Frank Schoonover

WE'D gained our first objective hours before

While dawn broke like a face with blinking eyes,

Pallid, unshaved and thirsty, blind with smoke.

Things seemed all right at first. We held their line,

With bombers posted, Lewis guns well placed,

And clink of shovels deepening the shallow trench.

     The place was rotten with dead; green clumsy legs

     High-booted, sprawled and grovelled along the saps

     And trunks, face downward, in the sucking mud,

     Wallowed like trodden sand-bags loosely filled;

     And naked sodden buttocks, mats of hair,

     Bulged, clotted heads slept in the plastering slime.

     And then the rain began,--the jolly old rain!

A yawning soldier knelt against the bank,

Staring across the morning blear with fog;

He wondered when the Allemands would get busy;

And then, of course, they started with five-nines

Traversing, sure as fate, and never a dud.

Mute in the clamour of shells he watched them burst

Spouting dark earth and wire with gusts from hell,

While posturing giants dissolved in drifts of smoke.

He crouched and flinched, dizzy with galloping fear,

Sick for escape,--loathing the strangled horror

And butchered, frantic gestures of the dead.

An officer came blundering down the trench:

'Stand-to and man the fire-step!' On he went...

Gasping and bawling, 'Fire-step ... counter-attack!'

     Then the haze lifted. Bombing on the right

     Down the old sap: machine-guns on the left;

     And stumbling figures looming out in front.

     'O Christ, they're coming at us!' Bullets spat,

And he remembered his rifle ... rapid fire...

And started blazing wildly ... then a bang

Crumpled and spun him sideways, knocked him out

To grunt and wriggle: none heeded him; he choked

And fought the flapping veils of smothering gloom,

Lost in a blurred confusion of yells and groans...

Down, and down, and down, he sank and drowned,

Bleeding to death. The counter-attack had failed.

Trench Warfare
by
Otto Dix

"Let no one ever, from henceforth say one word in any way countenancing war.

It is dangerous even to speak of how here and there the individual may gain

some hardship of soul by it. For war is hell, and those who institute it

are criminals. Were there even anything to say for it, it should not be said;

for its spiritual disasters far outweigh any of its advantages."

Back to the war as a noble enterprise.

The peace years.