Lookin’ ahead in the mist,
With a tin hat over your ivory
And a rifle clutched in your fist;
Waitin’ and watchin’ and wond’rin’
If the Hun’s comin’ over tonight—
Say, aren’t the things you think of
Enough to give you a fright?
For a couple o’ months or more;
Things that ’ull set you laughin’,
Things that ’ull make you sore;
Things that you saw in the movies,
Things that you saw on the street,
Things that you’re really proud of
Things that are—not so sweet;
Stories you hear and forget,
Ball games and birthday parties,
Hours of drill in the wet;
Headlines, recruitin’ posters,
Sunset ’way out at sea,
Evenings of pay-days—golly—
It’s a queer thing, this memory!
Voices of womenfolk,
Verses you learnt in schooldays
Pop up in the mist and smoke
As you stand there grippin’ that rifle,
A-starin’, and chilled to the bone,
Wonderin’ and wonderin’ and wonderin’,
Just thinkin’ there—all alone:
When will the gang break through?
What will the U. S. look like?
What will there be to do?
Where will the Boches be then?
Who will have married Nell?
When’s the relief a-comin’ up?—
Gosh! But this thinkin’s hell!
THE EVENING STAR
HAROLD SETON
in The Chicago Evening Post
The one star in the sky.
“Is that God’s service flag?” he cried,
And waited for reply.
She told the little one—
“Yes, that is why the star is there!
God gave His only Son!”
COLUMBIA’S PRAYER
THOMAS P. BASHAW
in The Herald and Examiner, Chicago
Permission to reproduce in this book
I am watching over you,
Going forth amid the rattle
Of the drums that call to battle.
Fought to make their brothers free;
God protect and succor you,
Boy in khaki, boy in blue.
And in His all-wise decision
Turn this tide of war to you,
Boy in khaki, boy in blue.
Snatch the vic’try just before you,
Heaven keep, encompass you,
Boy in khaki, boy in blue.
And the world looks on in wonder,
Paying tribute rare to you,
Boy in khaki, boy in blue,
To Columbia—Liberty;
’Tis my prayer, my hope for you,
Boy in khaki, boy in blue.
TWO VIEWPOINTS
AMELIA JOSEPHINE BURR
of The Vigilantes
Permission to reproduce in this book.
A German soldier in his journal wrote:
No bigger than my Hansel. He refused
To tell if any of his countrymen
Were hidden thereabout. Fifty yards on
We ran into an ambush. Well, of course
We shot him—little fool! Poor little fool!
Thinking himself a hero as he stood
Facing our guns, so little and so young
Against the sunny vineyard-green, I thought
What wasted courage! for the child was brave,
Fool as he was. The pity ...
A sudden shrapnel, and the writing stopped....
Mine—they were mine, the folly and the waste.
Now the keen edge of death has cut away
The eyelids of my soul and I must bear
The perfect understanding of the dead.
Now that I know myself as I am known,
How shall my soul endure Eternity?
God, God, if there be pity left for me,
Send to my son the child that I despised
A messenger to burn into his soul
While still he lives, the truth I died to learn!
DESTROYERS
“KLAXON”
in Blackwoods Magazine
And the fury of battle
Pass the destroyers in showers of spray.
As the Wolf-pack to the flank of the cattle,
We shall close in on them—shadows of gray.
In from ahead,
Through shell-flashes red,
We shall come down to them, after the Day,
Whistle and crash
Of salvo and volley
Round us and into us as we attack
Light on our target they’ll flash in their folly,
Splitting our ears with shrapnel-crack.
Fire as they will,
We’ll come to them still,
Roar as they may at us—Back—Go Back!
White though the sea
To the shell-splashes foaming,
We shall be there at the death of the Hun.
Only we pray for a star in the gloaming
(Light for torpedoes and none for a gun).
Lord—of Thy Grace
Make it a race,
Over the sea with the night to run.
NINETEEN-SEVENTEEN
SUSAN HOOKER WHITMAN
in The Kansas City Star
There are no men today who tower
Above their kind—the knights are dust,
Their names forgot, their good swords rust,”
We idly say. And yet, in truth—
The brave soul has eternal youth,
Like the great lighthouse rising free,
Whose far-flung beams guide ships at sea,
God lifts above his fellow man
A steadfast soul to dare and plan,
A king of men, by right divine,
Who in his forehead bears the sign—
He walks along the city street;
Unknowing, in the fields we meet
A modern knight in whose hand lies
A mighty Nation’s destinies.
Honor and Truth and Right live on,
And men today would keep the bridge
Horatius kept—from rocky ridge
Heroic Youth would still fling down
His horse, himself, to save the town.
Columbia calls!
Off with your hats and lift them high,
Our own, our sons are passing by.
THE SILENT ARMY.
IAN ADANAC
in The Montreal Daily Star
No sound of an army marching.
No banners wave high, no battle-cry
Comes from the war-worn fields where they lie,
The blue sky overarching.
The call sounds clearer than the bugle call
From this silent, dreamless army.
“No cowards were we, when we heard the call,
For freedom we grudged not to give our all,”
Is the call from the silent army.
This silent, dreamless army,
While living comrades spring to their side,
And the bugle-call and the battle-cry
Are heard as dreamer and dreamless lie
Under the stars of the arching sky,
The men who have heard from the men who have died
The call of the silent army.
THE SOURCE OF NEWS
From The Needle
But my aunt’s washerwoman’s son
Heard a policeman on his beat
Say to a laborer in the street
That he had a letter just last week,
Written in the finest Greek,
From a Chinese coolie in Timbuctoo,
Who said the niggers in Cuba knew
Of a colored man in a Texas town
Who got it straight from a circus clown,
That a man in Klondike heard the news
From a gang of South American Jews,
About somebody in Bamboo
Who heard a man who claimed he knew
Of a swell society female rake
Whose mother-in-law will undertake
To prove that her husband’s sister’s niece
Has stated in a printed piece
That she has a son who has a friend
Who knows when the war is going to end.
TO MY SON
A poem, anonymous, sent to the Chicago Evening Post by one whose son’s regiment was leaving for France.
For us to part. The hours have nearly run.
May God return you safe to land and home;
Yet, what God wills, so may His will be done.
Flash blue your eyes! Hold high your proud young head!
Today you march in Liberty’s fair name,
To save the line enriched by France’s dead!
’Tis hard to speed your marching forth, my son!
’Tis doubly hard to live without regret
For love unsaid, and kindnesses undone.
Upon those shores and see our flag unfurled!
To fight on France’s brave, unconquered land
With Liberty’s great sword for all the world!
The sky is black and Fastnet lies abreast;
A signal rocket flings its stars and falls
Across the night to welcome England’s guest.
And through the mist you hear faint Devon chimes,
Thank God for memories of those other nights
And days on other ships in happier times.
And aisles where colored sundust falls, and see
Old Canterbury Church where Becket gave
His life’s best blood for England’s liberty!
Above Stonehenge the Druid’s stars still sleep,
And on the turf within the circled fane
Beneath the autumn moon still lie the sheep.
And blackberries hang thick clustered o’er the ways,
Pluck down a branch! Rest by the road’s brown edge;
Eat! Nor forget our last vacation days!
The town half burned but held in spite of hell;
The bridge twice taken, lost, and won again;
The cratered glacis ripped with mine and shell.
The sodden road, the desolated plain;
The mateless birds, the season out of tune;
Fair France, at bay, is calling through her pain.
Our flag and you! But if the hour must come
To choose at last ’twixt self and liberty—
We’ll close our eyes! So let God’s will be done!
EASTER-EGGS
REGINALD WRIGHT KAUFFMAN
From this author’s “Our Navy at Work,” published by the Bobbs-Merrill Co. In 1917, our Government took over a large number of pleasure-yachts, fitted them with a few light guns and depth-charges and sent them into French waters to hunt submarines. They were variously known as “The Suicide Fleet” and “Easter-Eggs.” Mr. Kauffman spent some time at sea with them. Permission to reproduce in this book.
And he built that yacht for comfort and for speed;
He didn’t mean that it should go
Beyond a hundred miles or so;
He wanted something made for show,
Where he could drink and feed.
Or not enough to guard the stormy green,
And so he said to Mr. Wall:
“I’ll take your six-feet-over-all
And set it out to get the call
Upon the submarine.”
“She’ll sink before she’s half-way out to France”;
But Sam cut out her bathtubs white,
He painted her a perfect fright
And loaded her with dynamite;
Says he: “I’ll take a chance.”
But Uncle Sam was sot and sibylline;
His little plan, it warn’t a josh:
Wall’s boat ’s as dry ’s a mackintosh;
She fights, b’ gum; what’s more, b’ gosh,
She gits the submarine!
A DIRGE
VICTOR PEROWNE
in The London Times
No longer shall we see thy face.
But, in that other place,
Where may be heard
The roar of the world rushing down the wantways of the stars;
And the silver bars
Of heaven’s gate
Shine soft and clear:
Thou mayest wait.
Thee walking in the crowded streets,
But where the ocean of the Future beats
Against the flood-gates of the Present, swirling to this earth,
Thou mayest have;
Another Arcady
May thee receive.
Not here thou dost remain,
Thou art gone far away,
Where, at the portals of the day,
The hours ever dance in ring, a silvern-footed throng,
And seraphs stand
Choiring an endless strain
On either hand.
Not as the happy time of spring
Comes after winter burgeoning
On wood and wold in folds of living green, for thou art dead.
In vain, for thou
Dost pace another shore,
Untroubled now.
THE WOMAN’S GAME
Authorship not known
Brother of mine?
Or a day when I did not play you fair,
Brother of mine?
“As good as a boy,” you used to say,
And I was as eager for the fray,
And as loath to cheat or to run away,
Brother of mine!
Brother of mine,
And I’d give my soul to stand next to you,
Brother of mine.
The spirit, indeed, is still the same;
I would not shrink from the battle’s flame,
Yet here I stay—at the woman’s game,
Brother of mine!
Brother of mine,
You will go forward, unafraid,
Brother of mine.
Death can so small a part destroy,
You will have known the fuller joy—
Ah! would that I had been born a boy,
Brother of mine!
A FLEMISH VILLAGE
H. A.
in London Spectator
Whose image in the water, calm and low,
Was mingled with the lilies green and snow,
And lost itself in river mysteries.
The church lies broken near the fallen spire;
For here, among these old and human things
Death swept along the street with feet of fire,
And went upon his way with moaning wings.
Above the cluster of these homes forlorn,
Where giant fleeces of the shells are rolled,
O’er pavements by the kneeling herdsmen worn,
The wounded saints look out to see their fold.
But leaden stillness, when the thunder wanes,
Haunting the slender branches of the trees,
And settling low upon the listless plains.
FRANCE
CAPT. JOSEPH MEDILL PATTERSON
in the Chicago Tribune
From the French of Armentier Ohanian
Permission to reproduce in this book
I WAS an exile from my own country and wandered over the breast of the world seeking another country.
And I came into a land where there was only a long spring and a long autumn, where they did not know the deadly heats of our summers or the mortal colds of our mountains. Among the vines and sunny fields I saw the people of this land at work, ever young of soul, smiling, loving, and kindly.
I asked, “What is the name of this happy place?”
And the answer was, “France the voluptuous.”
I came to towns of splendid monuments, of harmonious buildings, of proud triumphal arches of the past, and above always I saw the spires of great cathedrals stretching toward the sky, as if to seize upon the feet of God.
I asked, “What is the name of this marvelous land?”
And the answer was, “France the glorious.”
I advanced again, when I was struck by the red color of a large river.... It was a river of warm blood that rolled down from afar in thick and heavy waves. I advanced again. Before me dark clouds of smoke hid the endless sky above huge fields of warriors in battle; when these died smiling at death others took their places, singing.
I asked, “What is the name of this chivalrous land?”
And the answer was, “France the courageous.”
At last I came to an immense city, of which I saw neither the beginning nor the end, a city full of sumptuous palaces, of parks, and fountains. The sun glistened on the marble of the streets and kissed the serene, resigned faces of women clothed in black. The chimes of churches filled the air with solemn sounds, and words, until then unknown to me, “Te Deum,” came from the throats of thousands of thousands.
With respect I asked, “What is the name of this land that mourns?”
And the answer was, “France the victorious.”
I kissed the earth of this land and said, “I have found my country, who was an exile.”
THE CLERK
B. H. M. HETHERINGTON
in The London Bookman
With cuffs gone shiny and a pen behind his ear;
Deep in Liabilities, Goods and Double Entry,
So he worked from year to year.
Given soul and body to discount and per cent;
Bounded by the columns of Purchase Book and Journal,
Soberly his moments went.
Ceased from ruling ledgers and entering amounts:
Clad in sodden khaki, with a gun in Flanders
He is balancing accounts.
POILU
STEUART M. EMERY, A. E. F.
in The Stars and Stripes
The traditional friendship between the United States and France was recemented under the fire of German guns. In France they celebrated our Fourth of July; in this country, we celebrated the Fourteenth of July, the anniversary of the fall of the Bastile. Yank and Poilu are brothers in war, don’t mind the languages. The inextinguishable humor of France never showed more quaintly than in that word, “Poilu.” It means “unshaven.” More freely, “a man who needs a shave.” A whimsical comment upon the French soldier’s way of letting his beard grow while he is in the field. Those boys were like the English and our own. They smiled at misery. They were good old sports, bless ’em!
And your war worn, faded uniform of blue,
With your multitude of haversacks abulge from heel to flap
And your rifle that is most as big as you.
You were made for love and laughter, for good wine and merry song,
Now your sunlit world has sadly gone astray,
And the road today you travel stretches rough and red and long,
Yet you make it, petit soldat, brave and gay.
And your days and nights are racking in the line,
There is nothing under heaven that can take away your smile,
Oh, so wistful, and so patient and so fine.
You are tender as a woman with the tiny ones who crowd
To upraise their lips and for your kisses pout,
Still, we’d hate to have to face you when the bugle’s sounding loud
And your slim, steel sweetheart Rosalie is out.
O’er a cigarette with nigh an inch to run,
And quite often you are noticed in a beard that’s full of hair,
But that heart of yours is always twenty-one.
No, you do not “parlee English,” and you find it very hard,
For you want to chum with us and words you lack;
So you pat us on the shoulder and say, “Nous sommes camarades.”
We are that, my poilu pal, to hell and back!
AUSTRALIA’S MEN
DOROTHEA MACKELLAR
Miss Mackellar is the daughter of Sir Charles Mackellar, Chairman of the Bank of New South Wales. Acknowledgment is due Dr. George Cooke-Adams, formerly an officer in the Australian naval forces, through whose courtesy her verses are presented here.
And some for love of a land,
And some for a dream of the world set free
Which they barely understand.
But splendidly, one and all,
Danger they drink as ’twere wine of Life
And jest as they reel and fall.
They have poured them freely forth
For the sake of the sun-steeped land they left
And the far green isle in the north.
Now hearts are breaking for pride?
Give comfort at least to the wounded men
And the kin of the man that died.
TANKS
O. C. A. CHILD
And Sammy, there, he was a driver, too—
He used to ride his racer—did Sir Sam;
While pokey London streets was all I knew.
Are chummy as the paper and the wall,
Each tooling of a caterpillar tank,
Each waiting on the blest old bugle call.
They’re like a blooming railroad, self-contained;
They lay their tracks, as you might say—pro tem,
And pick ’em up, and there’s good distance gained.
They lean against a house and push it down,
They’re like a baby fortress under sail,
And antic as a three-ring circus clown.
They can’t show fancy mile-a-minute stuff,
But when they charge, in armored fighting trim,
You bet the Germans find ’em fast enough!
To steam across yon farm-land in the night;
We’ll take their blamed barbed wire in our strides
And stamp a German trench line out of sight.
A HYMN OF FREEDOM
MARY PERRY KING
in Collier’s Weekly
Permission to reproduce in this book
Fling far the bugle blast!
There comes a sound of marching
From out the mighty past.
Let every peak and valley
Take up the valiant cry:
Where, beautiful as morning,
Our banner cuts the sky.
We stand to guard and save
The liberty of manhood,
The faith our fathers gave.
Then soar aloft, Old Glory,
And tell the waiting breeze
No law but Right and Mercy
Shall rule the Seven Seas.
No vengeance in our wrath,
We hold the line of freedom
Across the tyrant’s path.
Where’er oppression vaunteth
We loose the sword once more
To stay the feet of conquest,
And pray an end of war.
SWAN SONGS
More than all the others put together, the war poems of Alan Seeger, Lieutenant Colonel McCrae, and Lieut. Rupert Brooke, have touched and thrilled the heart of America. They are quiet, earnest, yet more powerful than trumpet blasts, for they rise triumphant from great depths, and as they sing, exalt.
Most familiar is our own Alan Seeger’s “I Have a Rendezvous with Death.” He was studying in Paris when the war broke out. In the third week he enlisted in the Foreign Legion. Two arduous years later he was called on higher service. July 4, 1916, his squad was caught in an assault on the village of Belloy-en-Santerre, where the Germans received them with the fire of six machine guns. Seeger was severely wounded, but went forward with the others, and helped take the place. Next morning he died. He had kept the tryst.
Alan Seeger was a New York boy. He was born in that city June 22, 1888. In his short life he had written some twenty poems. This was his last. It was written in camp, shortly before his call came:
I HAVE A RENDEZVOUS WITH DEATH[1]
At some disputed barricade
When Spring comes back with rustling shade
And apple blossoms fill the air.
I have a rendezvous with Death
When Spring brings back blue days and fair
It may be he shall take my hand
And lead me into his dark land
And close my eyes and quench my breath;
It may be I shall pass him, still,
I have a rendezvous with Death
On some scarred slope of battered hill,
When Spring comes round again this year
And the first meadow flowers appear.
Pillowed in silk and scented down,
Where love throbs out in blissful sleep,
Pulse nigh to pulse, and breath to breath,
Where hushed awakenings are dear.
But I’ve a rendezvous with Death
At midnight in some flaming town,
When Spring trips north again this year,
And I to my pledged word am true.
I shall not fail that rendezvous.
Lieut. Col. John McCrae was a Canadian physician who served in the South African war as an artilleryman. He was on his way to Canada when the war began in 1914, and immediately upon landing he entered the Val Cartier training camp and was commissioned a Captain. Later he joined the McGill Hospital corps and went with it to France, where he rose to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel, and died in service, January 28, 1918.
His poem, “In Flanders’ Fields,” was written on the Flanders front in the Spring of 1915. Its inspiration is thus explained by Sergeant Charles E. Bisset, of the 19th Battalion, 1st Brigade, Canadian Infantry:
“On the Flanders front in the early Spring of 1915, when the war had settled down to trench fighting, two of the most noticeable features of the field were, first, the luxuriant growth of red poppies appearing among the graves of the fallen soldiers, and second, that only one species of bird—the larks—remained on the field during the fighting. As soon as the cannonading ceased, they would rise in the air, singing.”
IN FLANDERS’ FIELDS
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place, and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders’ fields.
To you from failing hands we throw
The Torch. Be yours to hold it high!
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow,
In Flanders’ fields.
Rupert Brooke, a brilliant, impassioned young Englishman, was one of the first to take arms when Great Britain went to war. He died in the Dardanelles expedition, April 23, 1915. A few days before, he had sent from the Ægean Sea to the English-speaking peoples the poem by which he is best known:
THE SOLDIER[2]
That there’s some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed,
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England’s breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.
And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.
Lieutenant Brooke was a rare poet, having a serene faith, a knowledge of life as continuous. His bent of thought, the manner of his feeling, shine most clearly in this sonnet: