The Winter Soldier
By Edward Shanks
September 1914, April 1915
The Winter Soldier.
I.TO BE SUNG TO THE TUNE OF HIGH GERMANY
No more the English girls may go
To follow with the drum
But still they flock together
To see the soldiers come;
For horse and foot are marching by
And the bold artillery:
They're going to the cruel wars
In Low Germany.
They're marching down by lane and town
And they are hot and dry
But as they marched together
I heard the soldiers cry:
"O all of us, both horse and foot
And the proud artillery,
We're going to the merry wars
In Low Germany."
August, 1914
II.THE COMRADES
The men that marched and sang with me
Are most of them in Flanders now:
I lie abed and hear the wind
Blow softly through the budding bough.
And they are scattered far and wide
In this or that brave regiment;
From trench to trench across the mud
They go the way that others went.
They run with shining bayonet
Or lie and take a careful aim
And theirs it is to learn of death
And theirs the joy and theirs the fame.
III.IN TRAINING
The wind is cold and heavy
And storms are in the sky:
Our path across the heather
Goes higher and more high.
To right, the town we came from,
To left, blue hills and sea:
The wind is growing colder
And shivering are we.
We drag with stiffening fingers
Our rifles up the hill.
The path is steep and tangled
But leads to Flanders still.
IV.THE OLD SOLDIERS
We come from dock and shipyard, we come from car and train,
We come from foreign countries to slope our arms again
And, forming fours by numbers or turning to the right,
We're learning all our drill again and 'tis a pretty sight.
Our names are all unspoken, our regiments forgotten,
For some of us were pretty bad and some of us were rotten
And some will misremember what once they learnt with pain
And hit a bloody Serjeant and go to clink again.
V.GOING IN TO DINNER
Beat the knife on the plate and the fork on the can,
For we're going in to dinner, so make all the noise you can,
Up and down the officer wanders, looking blue,
Sing a song to cheer him up, he wants his dinner too.
March into the dining-hall, make the tables rattle
Like a dozen dam' machine guns in the bloody battle,
Use your forks for drum-sticks, use your plates for drums,
Make a most infernal clatter, here the dinner comes!
VI.ON TREK
Under a grey dawn, timidly breaking,
Through the little village the men are waking,
Easing their stiff limbs and rubbing their eyes;
From my misted window I watch the sun rise.
In the middle of the village a fountain stands,
Round it the men sit, washing their red hands.
Slowly the light grows, we call the roll over,
Bring the laggards stumbling from their warm cover,
Slowly the company gathers all together
And the men and the officer look shyly at the weather.
By the left, quick march!Off the column goes.
All through the village all the windows unclose:
At every window stands a child, early waking,
To see what road the company is taking.
VII.LEAVING THE BILLET
Good luck, good health, good temper, these,
A very hive of honey-bees
To make and store up happiness,
Should wait upon you without cease,
If I'd the power to call them down
Into this stuffy little town,
Where the dull air in sticky wreaths
Afflicts a man each time he breathes.
But since I have no power to call
Benevolent spirits down at all,
I'll wish you all the good I know
And close the chapter up and go.
VIII.THE FAREWELL
Farewell to rising early, now comes the lying late,
And long on the parade-ground my company shall wait
Before I come to join it on mornings cold and dark
And no more shall I lead it across the rimy park.
The men shall still manoeuvre in sunshine and in rain
And still they'll make the blunders I shall not check again;
They'll march upon the highway in weather foul and fair
And talk and sing with laughter and I shall not be there.
IX.ON ACCOUNT OF ILL HEALTH
You go, brave friends, and I am cast to stay behind,
To read with frowning eyes and discontented mind
The shining history that you are gone to make,
To sleep with working brain, to dream and to awake
Into another day of most ignoble peace,
To drowse, to read, to smoke, to pray that war may cease.
The spring is coming on, and with the spring you go
In countries where strange scents on the April breezes blow;
You'll see the primroses marched down into the mud,
You'll see the hawthorn-tree wear crimson flowers of blood
And I shall walk about, as I did walk of old,
Where the laburnum trails its chains of useless gold,
I'll break a branch of may, I'll pick a violet
And see the new-born flowers that soldiers must forget,
I'll love, I'll laugh, I'll dream and write undying songs
But with your regiment my marching soul belongs.
Men that have marched with me and men that I have led
Shall know and feel the things that I have only read,
Shall know what thing it is to sleep beneath the skies
And to expect their death what time the sun shall rise.
Men that have marched with me shall march to peace again,
Bringing for plunder home glad memories of pain,
Of toils endured and done, of terrors quite brought under,
And all the world shall be their plaything and their wonder.
Then in that new-born world, unfriendly and estranged,
I shall be quite alone, I shall be left unchanged.