Siegfried Sassoon
Groping along the tunnel,
step by step,
He winked his prying torch
with patching glare
From side to side, and sniffed
the unwholesome air.
Tins, boxes, bottles, shapes
too vague to know,
mattress from a bed;
And he, exploring fifty feet
below
The rosy gloom of battle
overhead.
Tripping, he grabbed the
wall; saw some one lie
Humped at his feet,
half-hidden by a rug,
And stooped to give the
sleeper’s arm a tug,
headquarters,” No reply,
“God blast your neck!” (For
days he’d had no sleep.)
“Get up and guide me
through this stinking
place.”
Savage, he kicked a soft,
unanswering heap,
And flashed his beam across
the livid face
eyes yet wore
Agony dying hard ten days
before;
And fists of fingers clutched
a blackening wound.
Alone he staggered on until
he found
Dawn’s ghost that filtered
down a shafted stair
To the dazed, muttering
creatures underground
shells in muffled sound.
At last, with sweat of horror
in his hair,
He climbed through
darkness to the twilight
air,
Unloading hell behind him
step by step.
—1918