(This was his first trip over) as he said:
"I wish we'd go; one might as well be dead
As in this slaughter-pen. What fools we are!
What poor, damned fools!" ...
A murmur from afar
Like wind through winter branches rose and fell
Along the line,—and up we went pell-mell,
Kicking the ladders backward in the mud,—
Crazy as loons, thirsting for German blood!
Then broke the storm like thunder on the plain!
The heavens roared—the shrapnel fell like rain;
Through the dun mist of dawn we groped and ran
In a long wave up that infernal hill,
Dodging black stumps and blacker pits until
I tripped on what had one time been a man
And fell headlong with a torn and bleeding thigh—
Angry and helpless while the storm drove by;
Thinking of John and the children there I lay
And watched the sullen sky grow ashen gray ...
They found him hanging dead upon the wire,—
Caught like a fly in a huge spider-net ...
In a few days the Colonel came to inquire
If I were well, and how my leg was set:
"You should have seen the troops! God! They were splendid!"
"Was the wire cut?" I asked.
