loads.

But now we’re returning to billets for rest—
                Earned repose.
We’ve been in the trenches for many a week.
In rain and in wind and in dugouts that leak.
Till we all are so hoarse we scarcely can speak.
                Goodness knows.

Our clothes they are worn and tattered and torn,
                And mud?
My heavens! we have it in our leggings and hair—
On breeches and jackets and all that we wear—
But we are so happy, we really don’t care—
                ’Tisn’t blood.

It isn’t those long, endless vigils at night,
                On the rack.
It isn’t the fighting and hunger and heat—
It isn’t the slush and rheumatics and sleet—
It isn’t the once-a-day cold meal we eat
                In the black.

It isn’t the shelling from sun unto sun—
                Curséd shells:
It isn’t the camouflage that you must use
If you have to lie down in your trench for a snooze,
It isn’t the stenches the Hun corpses choose
                For their smells.

But it’s clean clothes and gasoline-bath and a shave—
                What a treat!
It’s sleeping on elegant straw, and undressed,
With never a Toto disturbing your rest;
It’s regaining your “pep” and a wonderful zest
                When you eat.

We’re all of us willing, we’re all of us game
                For the fray:
But now we have finished a good hitch, and more,
In conducting this large and salubrious war,
Do you think we should feel very tearful or sore
                On this day?

So some we are singing and some shoot the bull,
                And some sleep.
(Don’t wake the poor devil, just leave him alone,
Though he’s jammed on your foot till it’s dead as a
    stone),
And we rumble through towns on the way to our own,
                Packed like sheep.

And your hand is afingering bills large and small—
                Francs galore.
And you’ve visions of things that your poor stomach begs,
Including nuts, candy and chocolate and eggs;
And you find you’ve forgotten the crick in your legs—
                Cramped and sore.

We’re a light-hearted, dirty-faced, rollicking crew—
                Grimy pawed:
Though a few cogitate on the living and dead,
And some look behindward, and some look ahead,
And some think of bunkies that shrapnel has sped
                To their God.

Lunging-wild, careening trucks
    Plunging through the rain,
Sweeping down the rainbow road
    To the sunlit plain,
And echoing back with ponderous roar
    Their cargo’s wild refrain.

MADEMOISELLE.

Oh Mademoiselle behind the Lines,
    When we’re weary and covered with dirt,
And you make a promenade with us,
    Or perhaps you mend our shirt.

You know our lives from your brothers,
    Or your sweethearts who can’t come back,
But only your laughter greets us
    When we shed that awful “pack.”

And some of you sell eggs to us
    In a town whence most have fled:
And some of your names have “de” and your blood
    Runs blue as well as red.

Oh Mademoiselle you sure are “chic”
    From your head to the tip o’ your toes,
And if you like us, you just plain like us,
    And you don’t give a damn who knows.

And Mademoiselle those eyes, Oo la la!
    So sparkling, dark and rare,
With the love of all the ages lying
    Deep and dormant there.

(Please, please don’t think us fickle—
    That we didn’t play the game—
But you seemed so human and made to be loved,
    And we murmured, “Je vous aime.”)

We hear you’re going back with us
    To the tune of ten thousand wives,
And we wish you ten thousand blessings,
    And ten thousand happy lives.

So here’s a health to you, Mademoiselle,
    Who helped us see it through,
And the load that your laughter lightened
    Is the debt that we owe to you.

THE FIRST DIVISION.

American Expeditionary Forces, 1917-1919.

When the clarion call of Country
    Bade strong men rise and go,
Came they the first of the willing first,
    In the pride that leal men know.

When the Eagle soared and its broad wings spread
    ’Bove the shores of an angered land,
Sailed they the first of the Viking first
    Where the treacherous waters spanned.

When the Eagle’s Brood awoke to the shriek
    Of the great shells day and night,
First of the flock bled they beneath
    The star-flare’s blinding light.

When the lunging, torn front lines locked
    And the strife raged man and man,
Swept they the first of the fighting first—
    And the van of the battle van.

.    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .

From the training days of Gondrecourt—
    Demange—cold, wet and gray—
To the trenches north of Lunéville—
    To Bouconville—Xivray—

To the crater-pitted, wasted tracts
    Of war-torn Picardy,
And the ghastly rubble hilltop
    Where Cantigny used to be:

To the splendid days of Soissons—
    The crisis of the strife:
To where giant pincers severed
    St. Mihiel as a knife:

To the glorious, stubborn struggle
    Up the rugged Argonne slopes,
Till the gates of Sedan crumbled
    With the Vandals’ crumbling hopes.

.    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .

Sweeping in conquering columns
    To the banks of the vaunted Rhine—
Ever the first of the fighting first,
    And the Lords of the Battle Line.

LITTLE GOLD CHEVRONS ON MY CUFFS.

Little gold chevrons on my cuffs,
    What do you mean to me?
“We to the left mean hike and drill,
Trenches and mud and heat and chill—
And I to the right for the blood ye spill
    Where the Marne runs to the sea.”

Little gold chevrons on my cuffs,
    What is the tale ye tell?
“We to the left, of the long months spent
Where the somber seasons slowly blent—
And I to the right, of the ragged rent
    That took so long to get well.”

Little gold chevrons on my cuffs,
    What do you say to me?
“That ye would not trade us, master mine,
For ribbon or cross or rank, in fine,
That you are ours and we are thine
    Through all the years to be.”

A TRIP-WIRE.

If you’re sneaking around on a night patrol,
Trying to miss each cock-eyed hole,
And you choke back a curse from the depths of your soul—
                It’s a trip-wire.

If you think there isn’t a thing around
Except the desolate, shell-torn ground,
And you stumble and roll like a spool unwound—
                It’s a trip-wire.

If you know a murmur would give the alarm,
And you’ve smothered a cough in the crotch of your arm,
And then you go falling all over the farm—
                It’s a trip-wire.