A TOUGH OF REALITY.

Digger (Invercargill RSA), Issue 6, 23 April 1920, Page 1

A TOUGH OF REALITY.

W'd gained ' our first objective hours before While dawn broke like a i'ace with blinking eyes, Pallid, unshaved, and thirsty, blind with smoke. Tbings seemed all right at first. We held their liue, With bombers posted, Lewis guns well placecl, Aild clink of shovels deepening the shallow trenqh. Ihe place was rotten with dead ; green clumsy legs High-booted, sprawled and grovelled along the saps ; And trunks, face downwards, in the sucking mud, | Wallowed like trodden sandbags loosely fdled ; And naked sodden buttdcks, mat.s of hair, Bulged, clotted heads slept in the plastering slime And then the rain began— the jolly old rain ! A yawnitig soldier knelt against the bank, Staring across the morning blear with iog; He wondered when the Allemands would get busy ■ And then, of cour.se, they started with five-nines Traversing, sure as fate, and never a | dud. ] Mute in the clamour of shells he watch- [ ed thern burst, Spouting dark earth and wire with gusts from hell, While quick-firing giants dissolved in drifts of smoke. He crouched and flinched, dizzy with galloping fear, Sick for escape, loathing the strangled horror And butchered, frantic gestures of the dead. An officer came blundering down the trench : "Stand to and lhan the fire-step'" On he went. Gasping and bawling, ' i.re-step. . couii-ter-attack !" Then the haze lifted. Bombing on the right Down the old sap ; machirie-guiis on the left ; And stumbling figures looming out in front. "0 Chr*ist, they'rn coming at us!'1 Bullets spat, And he remembered his ritle. . . rapid fire . And started blazing wildly . . then a bang Crumpled and spun him sideways, knocked him out To grunt and wriggle ; none heeded him, he choked And fought the flapping veils of smothering gloom, Lost in a blurred confusion of yells and groans . . . Down, and down, and down, he sank and drowned, Bleeding to death. The counter-attack had failed.