Punch/Volume 147/Issue 3830/War's Revenges
(A True Story.)
This War has done many wonderful things;
It has altered our views of Kaisers and Kings,
And quite discounted the stern rebukes
Of those who anathematized Grand Dukes.
It has hurled from many a lofty pinnacle
The self-sufficient and the cynical;
And revised the judgments we once held true
In various ways that are strange and new.
For instance, the other day there came
To see me, the same yet not the same,
A former office boy, whom once
I wholly misread as a Cockney dunce,
Who only cared for music-hall tunes—
And who went and 'listed in the Dragoons.
His khaki was much the worse for wear,
Soiled and crumpled and needing repair,
And he hadn't unlearned since his office days
His gruff laconic turn of phrase.
So I had to drag it out by degrees
That he hadn't been in the lap of ease,
But from Mons to Ypres, out at the Front,
Had helped to bear the battle's brunt.
Rest? Well, they had to do without it;
But he didn't make a song about it.
Last three weeks he'd never been dry;
A sniper had shot him through the thigh;
But his wound had healed, he was right as rain
And anxious to get to the Front again.
So there he stood, erect, serene,
Unshaken by all he had suffered and seen,
And ready once more at his Country's call
To leave his wife, his home, his all.
And I, as I thought of what he had done,
And the arm-chair band (of which I am one),
Elderly scribblers, who can't even drill,
And are only good at driving a quill—
Humbled and shamed to my inmost core
I wished I could drop clean through the floor.
For the tables were turned; I stood at zero,
And the office boy was a full-blown hero.
It has altered our views of Kaisers and Kings,
And quite discounted the stern rebukes
Of those who anathematized Grand Dukes.
It has hurled from many a lofty pinnacle
The self-sufficient and the cynical;
And revised the judgments we once held true
In various ways that are strange and new.
For instance, the other day there came
To see me, the same yet not the same,
A former office boy, whom once
I wholly misread as a Cockney dunce,
Who only cared for music-hall tunes—
And who went and 'listed in the Dragoons.
His khaki was much the worse for wear,
Soiled and crumpled and needing repair,
And he hadn't unlearned since his office days
His gruff laconic turn of phrase.
So I had to drag it out by degrees
That he hadn't been in the lap of ease,
But from Mons to Ypres, out at the Front,
Had helped to bear the battle's brunt.
Rest? Well, they had to do without it;
But he didn't make a song about it.
Last three weeks he'd never been dry;
A sniper had shot him through the thigh;
But his wound had healed, he was right as rain
And anxious to get to the Front again.
So there he stood, erect, serene,
Unshaken by all he had suffered and seen,
And ready once more at his Country's call
To leave his wife, his home, his all.
And I, as I thought of what he had done,
And the arm-chair band (of which I am one),
Elderly scribblers, who can't even drill,
And are only good at driving a quill—
Humbled and shamed to my inmost core
I wished I could drop clean through the floor.
For the tables were turned; I stood at zero,
And the office boy was a full-blown hero.