Work Text:
Trenches
We look out across this desolate place
Barbed wire, mud, and landmines.
While the generals calmly order us to our deaths,
From twenty five miles behind.
Marshal Joffre is so punctual.
His lunch is at noon each day.
No disaster such as Verdun
Can make this man late for his tay.
Field Marshal Haig lives in a railway carriage.
With maps of the Front on its walls.
With dreams of a great cavalry charge
Dreams here are just a load of balls
Through the wire and the mud and the gas
We charge blindly through the muck and the mire.
Hailed with long range enemy shells
And short range machine gun fire.
Stalled, not beaten, but dejected,
I crawl back to the damp trench each time
My body I rejoice has survived this,
Though where my soul resides, tis harder to divine.
Taff Williams a private from the valleys
John Compton another from the Dales
Shell-shocked and tied to their bunks crying,
Kept us awake all night with their wails
The sergeant led them away one dark morning
To a court martial, not safe passage home.
The verdict was announced that evening,
When the rifle reports rang out in the gloam.
The officer will send his dispatches
For the generals behind to compare
Yet as we attend to our muddy duties
I see no difference between heroic and despair
Because, Jesus, St Joseph, and St Anthony
This mass of misery, this waste of life,
When the Great Powers decide their disagreement
On this occasion will be decided by strife
We are told there is to be a new offensive
Head office has a new plan they say
So we'll charge through the mud and the bullets that's killed us
By the thousand since the very first day.
When the recruitment officers came
Twenty boys from Rathnew marched away
Oh we signed up for no noble idea
Now here at the Somme we have stayed.
We are named as battalions and companies
Yet everyman is here all alone
To try to cross No Man's Land
Each time we go on our own
No comrades here, just soldiers.
In the dark here when we cannot sleep
We sit in the bunker in silence
Each man with his own secrets to keep