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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.