  From Lieutenant Roche’s book of poems, “Rimes in Olive Drab.” Robert M. McBride & Company, Publishers, New York. Copyright, 1918. Special permission to insert in this book. Lieutenant Roche has deftly caught and preserved in words the strange vision of unannounced trains that flashed now and then past towns and villages bearing American troops from unknown camps to unknown ports of embarkation—the flash of faces of men about whom it was known only that they came from the shops and fields of home and were going across the seas to fight somewhere, for those who stood and gazed as they whirled by. The mystery, the roar of wheels, the eddying dust and the silence that followed infuse these lines with picture and sound that will stay in the minds of any who saw such trains go hurrying away. OVER thousands of miles Of shining steel rails, Past green and red semaphores And unheeding flagmen, Trains are running, Trains, trains, trains. Rattling through tunnels And clicking by way stations, Curving through hills, past timber, Out into the open places, Flashing past silos and barns And whole villages, Until finally they echo Against the squat factories That line the approach to the cities. Trains, trains, trains With the fire boxes wide open, Giant Moguls and old-time Baldwins And oil-burners on the Southern Pacific, Fire boxes wide open Flaring against the night, Like a tremendous watch fire Trains, trains, trains Serpentine strings of cars Loaded with boys and men— The legion of the ten-year span To whom has been given the task Of seeking the Great Adventure. Swaying through the North and South, And East and West, Freighted with the Willing And the Unwilling; Packed with the Thinking And the Unthinking, Pushing on to the Unknown Away from the shelter and security Of the accustomed into the Great Adventure. Trains, trains, trains With their coach sides scrawled With chalked bravado and, sometimes, With their windows black With yelling boys, In open-mouthed exultation That they do not feel, Rushing farther and farther From the known into the unseeable. Trains, trains, trains With sky-larking boys in khaki, Munching sandwiches and drinking pop; Or, tired and without their depot swagger, Curled up on the red-plush seats; Or asleep, with a stranger, in the Pullmans. They rush past our camp, Which lies against the railroad, With the crossing alarm jangling caution, And fade into the dust or night. Leaving us to conjecture where, As they have left others to wonder— As they must wonder themselves When they are done With the shouting and hand-shaking And kissing and hat-waving and singing. Trains, trains, trains Clicking on into unforecast days— Away from the shelter and security Of the accustomed into the Great Adventure. |
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