The Great Push: An Episode of the Great War

FOR long I had looked on Loos from a distance, had seen the red-brick houses huddled together brooding under the shade of the massive Twin Towers, the giant sentinels of the Ger...

THE night was intensely dark, and from the door of the dug-out I could scarcely see the outline of the sentry who stood on the banquette fifteen yards away. Standing on tiptoe I...

AS I was sitting in the Café Pierre le Blanc helping Bill Teake, my Cockney mate, to finish a bottle of vin rouge, a snub-nosed soldier with thin lips who sat at a table opposit...

"There's a battery snug in the spinney, A French 'seventy-five' in the mine, A big 'nine-point-two' in the village, Three miles to the rear of the line. The gunners will clean t...

I POKED my head through the upper window of our billet and looked down the street. An ominous calm brooded over the village, the trees which lined the streets stood immovable in...

"The firefly lamps were lighted yet, As we crossed the top of the parapet, But the East grew pale to another fire, As our bayonets gleamed by the foeman's wire. And the Eastern...

The dead men lay on the shell-scarred plain, Where death and the autumn held their reign— Like banded ghosts in the heavens grey The smoke of the conflict died away. The boys wh...

The dead men lay on the cellar stair, Toll of the bomb that found them there; In the streets men fell as a bullock drops, Sniped from the fringe of Hulluch copse. And stiff in k...

"THERE'LL be some char (tea) in a minute," said Bill, as he slid over the parapet into the trench. "I've got some cake, a tin of sardines and a box of cigars, fat ones."

It's "Carry on!" and "Carry on!" and "Carry on!" all day, And when we cannot carry on, they'll carry us away To slumber sound beneath the ground, pore beggars dead and gone, 'Ti...

TWILIGHT softened the gaunt corners of the ruined houses, and sheaves of shadows cowered in unfathomable corners. A wine shop, gashed and fractured, said "hush!" to us as we pas...

The turrets twain that stood in air Sheltered a foeman sniper there; They found who fell to the sniper's aim, A field of death on the field of fame— And stiff in khaki the boys...

WE, the London Irish Rifles, know Les Brebis well, know every café and _estaminet_, every street and corner, every house, broken or sound, every washerwoman, wine-shop matron, h...

THE Company marched from the village of Les Brebis at nightfall; the moon, waning a little at one of its corners, shone brightly amidst the stars in the east, and under it, behi...

FROM the day I left England up till the dawn of September 25th I never met a German, and I had spent seven months in France. At night when out on working-parties I saw figures m...

A RIFLEMAN lay snoring in the soft slush on the floor of the trench, his arms doubled under him, his legs curved up so that the knees reached the man's jaw. As I touched him he...

"SOME min have all the damned luck that's agoin'," said Corporal Flaherty. "There's Murney, and he's been at home two times since he came out here. Three months ago he was allow...

The moon looks down upon a ghost-like figure, Delving a furrow in the cold, damp sod, The grave is ready, and the lonely digger Leaves the departed to their rest and God. I shap...

FELAN went up the ladder of the assembly trench with a lighted cigarette in his mouth. Out on the open his first feeling was one of disappointment; to start with, the charge was...

Was it only yesterday Lusty comrades marched away? Now they're covered up with clay. Hearty comrades these have been, But no more will they be seen Drinking wine at Nouex-les-Mi...