“O dearly, dearly avenged you’ll be
Or ever a day be sped!”
Now they hold that we are the best of the best,
And each of our men may wear,
Like a gash of crimson across his chest,
As one fierce-proved in the battle-test,
The blood-red Fourragère.
For each as he leaps to the top can see,
Like an etching of blood on his brain,
A wife or a mother lashed to a tree,
With two black holes where her breasts should be,
Left to rot in the rain.
So we fight like fiends, and of us they say
That we neither yield nor spare.
Oh, we have the bitterest debt to pay….
Have we paid it?–Look–how we wear to-day
Like a trophy, gallant and proud and gay.
Our blood-red Fourragère.
It is often weary waiting at the little poste de secours. Some of us play solitaire, some read a “sixpenny,” some doze or try to talk in bad French to the poilus. Around us is discomfort, dirt and drama.
For my part, I pass the time only too quickly, trying to put into verse the incidents and ideas that come my way. In this way I hope to collect quite a lot of stuff which may some day see itself in print.
Here is one of my efforts:
