Page:War, the Liberator (1918).djvu/129

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’T was in a most unpleasant wood,
The Hammerhead[1] by name,
When we waited for three hours or more
Under the Bosches’ fire—
But I only got a beastly cold
And some scratches from the wire.

Heigh-ho, how was I to know
They’d wired the bottom of the ditch by which we had to go
And that was how I somehow failed to get the D.S.O.,
With ten, twenty, thirty, forty Bosches in a row.

I’m waiting now, my old grenade,
Until the spring sets in,
And the blinking old Division
More pushing will begin.
And when you come to bury me
With a handy pick and spade,
Just write, “Here lies a grenadier
That loathed his old grenade.”

107
  1. Hammerhead Wood, Thiepval, where the Bosches nearly cut short a bright young life.