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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=508556" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Only A Boche</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">We brought him in from between the lines: we'd better have let him lie;<br>For what's the use of risking one's skin for a tyke that's going to die?<br>What's the use of tearing him loose under a gruelling fire,<br>When he's shot in the head, and worse than dead, and all messed up on the wire?<br>However, I say, we brought him in. Diable! The mud was bad;<br>The trench was crooked and greasy and high, and oh, what a time we had!<br>And often we slipped, and often we tripped, but never he made a moan;<br>And how we were wet with blood and with sweat! but we carried him in like our own.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Now there he lies in the dug-out dim, awaiting the ambulance,<br>And the doctor shrugs his shoulders at him, and remarks, &quot;He hasn't a chance.&quot;<br>And we squat and smoke at our game of bridge on the glistening, straw-packed floor,<br>And above our oaths we can hear his breath deep-drawn in a kind of snore.<br>For the dressing station is long and low, and the candles gutter dim,<br>And the mean light falls on the cold clay walls and our faces bristly and grim;<br>And we flap our cards on the lousy straw, and we laugh and jibe as we play,<br>And you'd never know that the cursed foe was less than a mile away.<br>As we con our cards in the rancid gloom, oppressed by that snoring breath,<br>You'd never dream that our broad roof-beam was swept by the broom of death.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Heigh-ho! My turn for the dummy hand; I rise and I stretch a bit;<br>The fetid air is making me yawn, and my cigarette's unlit,<br>So I go to the nearest candle flame, and the man we brought is there,<br>And his face is white in the shabby light, and I stand at his feet and stare.<br>Stand for a while, and quietly stare: for strange though it seems to be,<br>The dying Boche on the stretcher there has a queer resemblance to me.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">It gives one a kind of a turn, you know, to come on a thing like that.<br>It's just as if I were lying there, with a turban of blood for a hat,<br>Lying there in a coat grey-green instead of a coat grey-blue,<br>With one of my eyes all shot away, and my brain half tumbling through;<br>Lying there with a chest that heaves like a bellows up and down,<br>And a cheek as white as snow on a grave, and lips that are coffee brown.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And confound him, too! He wears, like me, on his finger a wedding ring,<br>And around his neck, as around my own, by a greasy bit of string,<br>A locket hangs with a woman's face, and I turn it about to see:<br>Just as I thought . . . on the other side the faces of children three;<br>Clustered together cherub-like, three little laughing girls,<br>With the usual tiny rosebud mouths and the usual silken curls.<br>&quot;Zut!&quot; I say. &quot;He has beaten me; for me, I have only two,&quot;<br>And I push the locket beneath his shirt, feeling a little blue.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Oh, it isn't cheerful to see a man, the marvellous work of God,<br>Crushed in the mutilation mill, crushed to a smeary clod;<br>Oh, it isn't cheerful to hear him moan; but it isn't that I mind,<br>It isn't the anguish that goes with him, it's the anguish he leaves behind.<br>For his going opens a tragic door that gives on a world of pain,<br>And the death he dies, those who live and love, will die again and again.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">So here I am at my cards once more, but it's kind of spoiling my play,<br>Thinking of those three brats of his so many a mile away.<br>War is war, and he's only a Boche, and we all of us take our chance;<br>But all the same I'll be mighty glad when I'm hearing the ambulance.<br>One foe the less, but all the same I'm heartily glad I'm not<br>The man who gave him his broken head, the sniper who fired the shot.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">No trumps you make it, I think you said? You'll pardon me if I err;<br>For a moment I thought of other things . . .Mon Dieu! Quelle vache de gueerre.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Robert+William+Service">Robert William Service</a><div class=q>
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<script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=508556" data-title="Only A Boche de Robert William Service" data-description="We brought him in from between the lines: we'd better have let him lie;
For what's the use of risking one's skin for a tyke that's going to die?
What's the use of tearing him loose under a gruelling fire,
When he's shot in the head, and worse than..."></div>
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