Tank
Artist Unknown

The Dragon and the Undying

(from The Old Huntsman)

ALL night the flares go up; the Dragon sings

And beats upon the dark with furious wings;

And, stung to rage by his own darting fires,

Reaches with grappling coils from town to town;

He lusts to break the loveliness of spires,

And hurls their martyred music toppling down.

Yet, though the slain are homeless as the breeze,

Vocal are they, like storm-bewilder'd seas.

Their faces are the fair, unshrouded night,

And planets are their eyes, their ageless dreams.

Tenderly stooping earthward from their height,

They wander in the dusk with chanting streams,

And they are dawn-lit trees, with arms up-flung,

To hail the burning heavens they left unsung.

Trench Raid by U.S. Marines
by
Captain John W. Thompson, Jr.

Attack

(from The Old Huntsman)

AT dawn the ridge emerges massed and dun

In the wild purple of the glow'ring sun,

Smouldering through spouts of drifting smoke that shroud

The menacing scarred slope; and, one by one,

Tanks creep and topple forward to the wire.

The barrage roars and lifts. Then, clumsily bowed

With bombs and guns and shovels and battle-gear,

Men jostle and climb to meet the bristling fire.

Lines of grey, muttering faces, masked with fear,

They leave their trenches, going over the top,

While time ticks blank and busy on their wrists,

And hope, with furtive eyes and grappling fists,

Flounders in mud. O Jesus, make it stop!

The Redeemer

(from The Old Huntsman)

DARKNESS: the rain sluiced down; the mire was deep;

It was past twelve on a mid-winter night,

When peaceful folk in beds lay snug asleep;

There, with much work to do before the light,

We lugged our clay-sucked boots as best we might

Along the trench; sometimes a bullet sang,

And droning shells burst with a hollow bang;

We were soaked, chilled and wretched, every one;

Darkness; the distant wink of a huge gun.

I turned in the black ditch, loathing the storm;

A rocket fizzed and burned with blanching flare,

And lit the face of what had been a form

Floundering in mirk. He stood before me there;

I say that He was Christ; stiff in the glare,

And leaning forward from His burdening task,

Both arms supporting it; His eyes on mine

Stared from the woeful head that seemed a mask

Of mortal pain in Hell's unholy shine.

No thorny crown, only a woollen cap

He wore--an English soldier, white and strong,

Who loved his time like any simple chap,

Good days of work and sport and homely song;

Now he has learned that nights are very long,

And dawn a watching of the windowed sky.

But to the end, unjudging, he'll endure

Horror and pain, not uncontent to die

That Lancaster on Lune may stand secure.

He faced me, reeling in his weariness,

Shouldering his load of planks, so hard to bear.

I say that He was Christ, who wrought to bless

All groping things with freedom bright as air,

And with His mercy washed and made them fair.

Then the flame sank, and all grew black as pitch,

While we began to struggle along the ditch;

And someone flung his burden in the muck,

Mumbling: 'O Christ Almighty, now I'm stuck!'

Widows and Orphans
by
Kathe Kollwitz

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War as a pointless and wasteful endeavor.