The Ypres Times.
93
And asked what he'd do in a gas-attack. Joe told him: Beat on the gong.'
What else
Open fire, Sir,' Joe answered.
Good God, man,' our General said,
By the time you'd beaten that bloodstained gong the chances are you'd be dead.
Just think, lad.' Gas helmet, of course, Sir.' Yes, damn it, and gas helmet first.'
So Joe stood dumb to attention, and wondered why he'd been cursed."
The gashed heads turned to the Rifleman, and now it seemed that they knew
Why the face that had never a smear of blood was stained to the jawbones, blue.
He was posted again at midnight." The scarred heads craned to the voice,
As the man with the blood-red bayonet spoke up for the mate of his choice.
You know what it's like in a listening-post, the Very candles aflare,
Their bullets smacking the sand-bags, our Vickers combing your hair,
How your ears and your eyes get jumpy, till each known tuft that you scan
Moves and crawls in the shadows till you'd almost swear it was man
You know how you peer and snuff at the night when the North-East gas-winds blow."
By the One who made us and maimed us quoth lower Valhalla we know
Sudden, out of the blackness, sudden as Hell, there came
Roar and rattle of rifles, spurts of machine-gun flame
And Joe stood up in the forward sap to try and fathom the game.
Sudden, their shells come screaming sudden, his nostrils sniff
The sickening reek of the rotten pears, the death that kills with a whiff.
Deathand he knows it certain, as he bangs on his cartridge-case,
With the gas-cloud's claws at his windpipe and the gas cloud's wings on his face
We heard his gong in our dug-out, he only whacked on it twice.
We whipped our gas-bags over our heads, and manned the step in a trice
For the cloud would have caught us as sure as Fate if he'd taken the Staff's advice."
His head was cleft with a great red wound from the chin to the temple-bone.
But his voice was as clear as a sounding gong, I'll be damned if I'll drink alone,
Not even in lower ValhallaIs he free of your free Canteen,
My mate who comes with the unfleshed point and the full-charge magazine
The gashed heads rose at the Rifleman o'er the rings of the Endless Smoke,
And loud as the roar of a thousand guns Valhalla's answer broke.
And loud as the crash of a thousand shells their tankards clashed on the board
He is free of the mess of the Killer-men, your mate of the unfleshed sword
For we know the worth of his deed on earth as we know the speed of the death
Which catches its man by the back of the throat aud gives him water for breath
As we know how the hand at the helmet-cloth may tarry seconds too long,
When the very life of the front-line trench is staked on the beat of a gong.
By the four you slew, by the case he smote, by the grey gas-cloud and, the green,
We pass your mate for the Endless Smoke and the beer of the free Canteen."
In the lower hall of Valhalla, with the heroes of no renown,
With our nameless dead of the Marne, and the Aisne, of Mons, and of Wipers town,
With the men who killed ere they died for us, sits Rifleman Joseph Brown.
As we go to press comes the news of the shameful crime which has caused the
death of Field-Marshal Sir Henry Wilson, that great figure of the war and an
honoured Member of the Committee of the Ypres League. We unfortunately lack the
space to do more here than record our profound regret and our deep sympathy with
his bereaved relatives. The Empire has lost a fine Soldier and a true Patriot, and
the League a firm Friend.
