Just got your letter and the poems. Thanks.

You always were a brainy sort of chap:

Though pretty useless as a subaltern—

Too much imagination, not enough

Of that rare quality, sound commonsense

And so you’ve managed to get on the Staff:

Influence, I suppose: a Captain, too!

How do tabs suit you? Are they blue or green?

About your book. I’ve read it carefully,

So has Macfaddyen (you remember him,

The light-haired chap who joined us after Loos?);

And candidly, we don’t think much of it.

The piece about the horses isn’t bad;

But all the rest, excuse the word, are tripe—

The same old tripe we’ve read a thousand times.

My grief, but we’re fed up to the back-teeth

With war-books, war-verse, all the eye-wash stuff

That seems to please the idiots at home.

Lord knows, the newspapers are bad enough;

But they’ve got some excuse—the censorship—

Helping to keep their readers’ spirits up—

Giving the public what it wants: (besides,

One mustn’t blame the press, the press has done

You might have done that much; from you, at least,

I thought we’d get an inkling of the truth.

But no; you rant and rattle, beat your drum,

And blow your two-penny trumpet like the rest:

“Red battle’s glory,” “honour’s utmost task,”

“Gay jesting faces of undaunted boys,” ...

The same old Boys’-Own-Paper balderdash!

Mind you, I don’t deny that they exist,

These abstract virtues which you gas about—

(We shouldn’t stop out here long, otherwise!)—

Honour and humour, and that sort of thing;

(Though heaven knows where you found the glory-touch,

Unless you picked it up at G.H.Q.);

But if you’d commonsense, you’d understand

That humour’s just the Saxon cloak for fear,

Our English substitute for “Vive la France,”

Or else a trick to keep the folk at home

From being scared to death—as we are scared;

Honest to God, it makes me sick and tired

To think that you, who lived a year with us,

Should be content to write such tommy-rot.

I feel as though I’d sent a runner back

With news that we were being strafed like Hell ...

And he’d reported: “Everything O. K.”

Something’s the matter: either you can’t see,

Or else you see, and cannot write—that’s worse.

Hang it, you can’t have clean forgotten things

You went to bed with, woke with, smelt and felt,

All those long months of boredom streaked with fear:

Mud, cold, fatigue, sweat, nerve-strain, sleeplessness,

And men’s excreta viscid in the rain,

And stiff-legged horses lying by the road,

Their bloated bellies shimmering, green with flies....

Have you forgotten? you who dine to-night

In comfort at the Carlton or Savoy.

... Our Brigade’s in rest—

The usual farm. I’ve got the only bed.

The men are fairly comfy—three good barns.

Thank God, they didn’t have to bivouac

After this last month in the Salient.) ...

You have forgotten; or you couldn’t write

This sort of stuff—all cant, no guts in it,

Hardly a single picture true to life.

Well, here’s a picture for you: Montauban—

Last year—the flattened village on our left—

On our right flank, the razed Briqueterie,

Their five-nines pounding bits to dustier bits—

Behind, a cratered slope, with batteries

Crashing and flashing, violet in the dusk,

And prematuring every now and then—

In front, the ragged Bois de Bernafay,

Bosche whizz-bangs bursting white among its trees.

You had been doing F.O.O. that day;

(The Staff knows why we had an F.O.O.:

One couldn’t flag-wag through TrÔnes Wood; the wires

Went down as fast as one could put them up;

And messages by runner took three hours.)

I got the wind up rather: you were late,

And they’d been shelling like the very deuce.

However, back you came. I see you now,

Staggering into “mess”—a broken trench,

Two chalk-walls roofed with corrugated iron,

And, round the traverse, Driver Noakes’s stove

Stinking and smoking while we ate our grub.

Your face was blue-white, streaked with dirt; your eyes

Had shrunk into your head, as though afraid

To watch more horrors; you were sodden-wet

With greasy coal-black mud—and other things.

Sweating and shivering, speechless, there you stood.

I gave you whisky, made you talk. You said:

“Major, another signaller’s been killed.”

“Who?”

“Gunner Andrews, blast them. O my Christ!

And you’re the chap who writes this claptrap verse!

Lord, if I’d half your brains, I’d write a book:

None of your sentimental platitudes,

But something real, vital; that should strip

The glamour from this outrage we call war,

Shewing it naked, hideous, stupid, vile—

One vast abomination. So that they

Who, coming after, till the ransomed fields

Where our lean corpses rotted in the ooze,

Reading my written words, should understand

This stark stupendous horror, visualize

The unutterable foulness of it all....

I’d shew them, not your glamourous “glorious game,”

Which men play “jesting” “for their honour’s sake”—

(A kind of Military Tournament,

With just a hint of danger—bound in cloth!)—

But War,—as war is now, and always was:

And if posterity should ask of me

What high, what base emotions keyed weak flesh

To face such torments, I would answer: “You!

Not for themselves, O daughters, grandsons, sons,

Good-night, my soldier-poet. Dormez bien!