The Winter Soldier

    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.