Page:Sassoon, Siegfried - Counter-Attack and Other Poems (1918).djvu/53

 Somehow I always thought you'd get done in,
 * Because you were so desperate keen to live:

You were all out to try and save your skin,
 * Well knowing how much the world had got to give.

You joked at shells and talked the usual "shop,"
 * Stuck to your dirty job and did it fine:

With "Jesus Christ! when will it stop?
 * Three years. . . . It's hell unless we break their line.

So when they told me you'd been left for dead
 * I wouldn't believe them, feeling it must be true.

Next week the bloody Roll of Honour said
 * "Wounded and missing"—(That's the thing to do

When lads are left in shell-holes dying slow,
 * With nothing but blank sky and wounds that ache,

Moaning for water till they know
 * It's night, and then it's not worth while to wake!)