Ballads of Battle/Macfarlane's Dug-out

by Joseph Lee

MACFARLANE'S DUG-OUT

"This is the house that Mac built."

Since the breed that were our forebears first crouched within a cave,
And found their food and fought their foe with arrow and with stave,
And the things that really mattered unto men were four, or three:
Shelter, and sustenance; a maid; the simple right to be;
And Fear stalked through the forest and slid adown the glade—
There's been nothing like the dug-out that Macfarlane made!

When Mac first designed his dug-out, and commenced his claim to peg,
He thought of something spacious in which one might stretch a leg.
Might lie out at one's leisure, and sit up at one's ease,
And not be butted in the back by t'other fellow's knees;
Of such a goodly fashion were the plans the builder laid,
And even so the dug-out that Macfarlane made.

He shored it up with timber, and he roofed it in with tin
Torn from the battered boxes that they bring the biscuits in
(He even used the biscuits, but he begs I should not state
The number that he took for tiles, the number that he ate!)—
He shaped it, and secured it to withstand the tempest's shocks―
(I know he stopped one crevice with the latest gift of socks!)—
He trimmed it with his trenching-tool, and slapped it with his spade
A marvel was the dug-out that Macfarlane made.

MACFARLANE IN HIS DUG-OUT
A Portrait Sketch

He lined the walls with sand-bags, and he laid the floor with wood,
And when his eye beheld it, he beheld it very good;
A broken bayonet in a chink to hold the candle-light;
A waterproof before the door to keep all weather-tight;
A little shelf for bully, butter, bread, and marmalade—
Then finished was the dug-out that Macfarlane made.

Except the Lord do build the house there is no good or gain;
Except the Lord keeps ward with us the watchman wakes in vain:
So when we'd passed the threshold, and partaken of Mac's tea,
And chalked upon the lintel, "At the Back o' Bennachie,"
Perchance a prayer soared skyward, although no word was said—
At least, God blessed the dug-out that Macfarlane made!

For when the night was dark with dread, and the day was red with death,
And the whimper of the speeding steel passed like a shuddering breath,
And the air was thick with wingéd war, riven shard, and shrieking shell,
And all the earth did spit and spume like the cauldron hot of Hell:
When the heart of man might falter, and his soul be sore afraid—
We just dived into the dug-out that Macfarlane made!^[1]

Deep is the sleep I've had therein, as free from sense of harm,
As when my curly head was laid in the crook of my mother's arm;
My old great-coat for coverlet, curtain, and counterpane,
While patter, patter on the roof, came the shrapnel lead like rain;
And when a huge "Jack Johnson" made us a sudden raid,
I was dug out from the dug-out that Macfarlane made!

If in the unseen scheme of things, as well may be, it chance
That I bequeath my body to the soil of sunny France,
I will not cavil though they leave me sleeping where I fell,
With just a little wooden cross my lowly tale to tell:
I do not ask for sepulture beneath some cypress shade—
Just a six by two feet "dug-out" by Macfarlane made.

 

Postscript.—In the trenches, as will be readily understood, one has no continual abiding place. Consequently the dug-out of the picture is not the dug-out of the poem, and when last I looked in upon Macfarlane, he was swinging contentedly in a hammock of his own construction. It unfortunately falls to me to add a postscript of sadder import. Since the Advance of 25th September, my comrade has been counted among the missing.

1. It may interest the reader to know that these lines are being written during a very considerable bombardment, in which one misses the friendly proximity of just such a dug-out as Macfarlane's.