ARMISTICE DAY,
101
British lost 40,000 men and the enemy 250,000, figures which speak for themselves.
The 1st and 2nd Divisions were reduced to a quarter their strength, the cavalry
had lost half their number, and the 7th Divisionwhich had left England less
than a month previously with 400 officers and 12,000 mencould only muster 44
officers and 2,336 men. The struggle continued, but it was left to the Territorials
and the Indian troops, and later to the New Armies and Colonials, to carry on the
defence of Ypres and worthily uphold the traditions of the Old Army. This they
did, but that is another story.
Many of those who later helped to defend the Salient have now joined that
noble army of Britain's dead, but had the old Regulars not held on during those
early critical days when we were still in training, our efforts would have been too
late and our country would have been in deadly peril.
We who survive the ordeal have still a duty to performa duty to our
countrythe country our Elder Brethren loved, served and died for. The
Gallant Old Contemptiblesa shilling a day and no overtime pay. What a debt
we owe to themMay they rest in peace.
We who from their dying hands received
The flag they bore, are called on to fulfil
The tasks that war and death left unachieved;
That their dear Land may shine more glorious still."
November Eleventh had come and gone.
With its short two minutes," so dearly won,
And the veteran, tired, time-lined and gray,
Went back, in his dreams, to another day
When, dazed, reluctant, he peered through the
wire,
Grimly doubting that order Cease fire,"
Till, strange and tense, the silence grew
And the weary one knew that the words were true.
As he sits and dreams old scenes drift by
Shell craters, flares, and a flash-rimmed sky
No Man's Land," with its gruesome dead,
The yawning black of a tunnel head
A cobbled road between tall trees,
Shrapnel puffs on a vagrant breeze
A pock-marked ridge where Death was king,
The morning sun on an aeroplane wing.
Splintered stubs in a Flemish vale,
A foul pillbox in Passchendaele
Hill 60, Plugstreet," Sanctuary Wood,
Where the thin, red line of '15 stood.
He hears the cry of a tortured soul,
The Salient guns taking nightly toll
And wonders anew at the freak of Fate
That gave those names for the Menin Gate.
Close-packed for hours on a crawling train,
Slag heaps of Lens in a drizzling rain
Vimy Heights and the crater posts,
Great chalk caves with Huguenot ghosts
The cellar ghouls down Arras way,
Tragic ruins around Souchez
An Easter Monday's murky dawn
And a devil's game with a human pawn.
The leaning virgina war-end bet,
Regina Trench and Courcelette
Australian graves amid Somme mud,
Charging tanks, the short-ranged dud
The Hun's last drive and the frenzied fray
'Round Amiens, Arras, and red Cambrai
A Blighty wound and hours of pain
The vet. has lived through those years again.
He is back once more to that hectic night,
With his old pal, Jim, in a finish fight.
When, back to back, in a slimy hole,
They held their own with a Hun patrol
Till a bullet's sudden, searing blow
Brought sick'ning faint and crimson flow-
Then the message, raw, in the battle's din,
That Jim was dead when they brought him in.
The veteran roused from his reverie,
Bitterly thought of the Powers That Be.
Two Minutesall, in a passing year.
Other lands may the Day revere.
They threw the torchhave we all forgot
That peace on earth was so dearly bought
Greater love and thorns crowned Him
He arose to salutethe boys with Jim.
W. R. B.
