The Happy Warrior Read Online Free PDF

catches,
    When the Sergeant repeats the “Stand To”.
    Is your magazine loaded and ready,
    Is your bayonet fixed on firm and true?
    â€˜Tis the questioning voice of the Sergeant,
    When the word’s passed along to “Stand To”.
    And then when his vigil is over
    In his heart blossoms forth hope anew,
    And once more he feels life is worth living,
    When he’s finished the daily “Stand To”.
    But we’re working and hoping for victory
    And when we have smashed our way through,
    Every day for the twenty-four hours
    We’ll see that the Germans “Stand To”.
    Pte Charles H. Breckell
    19th Batt. AIF
    (AWM 1 DRL 148)
----
    Boxing On
    There’s a heavy, distant rumble
    As the lingering sun sinks low,
    And there’s flashing of artillery
    In the battle’s ebb and flow;
    And the searchlight ever flickers
    Seeking, seeking for a sign
    Of the enemy in motion
    Down the line.
    Now the din creeps ever nearer
    Till the air is rocked with sound,
    And the rifles and machine guns
    Get to business, all around;
    And there sounds the devil’s chorus,
    The discordant notes of hell,
    When the guns boom forth their greetings
    In unceasing bursts of shell.
    But at last the gunfire slackens
    And reluctantly draws to a close,
    As the sound-stunned weary gunners
    Seek a short, hard-earned repose;
    And only the sentry’s rifle
    And machine gun’s deadly breath,
    Remain to remind the wakeful
    Of nations in grips to the death.

    Pte Charles H. Breckell
    19th Batt. AIF
    (AWM 1 DRL 148)
----
    Thoughts on a Cottage Wrecked by Gun Fire
    Ere yet the contending hosts in battle wrought,
    It stood, a humble wayside home;
    The labourer after toil its sanctuary sought,
    Not ever far from its old roof would roam;
    Content to spend the autumn of his life
    Amid the circle of his bairns and wife.
    But now, alas, his Joys and Hopes are dead,
    Scarce stone on stone of that fair cottage stands;
    The labourer and his family far have fled,
    The striving armies desecrate his lands.
    The gunner who, in thoughtless pride of aim
    With cold precision, wrecked that cottage so,
    Gave not a thought to humble folk bowed low,
    Eating the bread of charity in shame.
    But such is the reckoning mankind must pay,
    When monarchs’ wild ambitions are given play.
    Pte Charles H. Breckell
    19th Batt. AIF
    Killed in Action, Flers, 14 November 1916,
    Aged 23 years
    (AWM 1 DRL 148)
----
    How Rifleman Brown Came to Valhalla
    To the lower Hall of Vallalla, to the heroes of no renown,
    Relieved from his spell at the listening-post, came Rifleman Joseph Brown
    With never a rent in his khaki nor a smear of blood on his face
    He flung his pack from his shoulders and made for an empty place.
    The killer-men of Valhalla looked up from the banquet board
    At the unfouled breach of his rifle, at the unfleshed point of his sword;
    And the unsung dead of the trenches, the kings who have never a crown,
    Demanded his pass to Valhalla from Rifleman Joseph Brown.
    â€œWho comes unhit to the party ?” A one-legged Corporal spoke,
    And the gashed heads nodded approval through the rings of endless smoke.
    â€œWho comes for the beer and woodbines of the never-closed canteen,
    With the barrack-shine on his bayonet and a full-charged magazine?”
    Then Rifleman Brown looked ’round him at the nameless men of the Line,
    At the wounds of the shell and the bullet, at the burns of the bomb and the mine;
    At the tunics virgin of medals but crimson-clotted with blood,
    At the ankle boots and the puttees caked stiff with the Flanders mud;
    At the myriad short Lee-Enfields that crowded the rifle-rack,
    Each with its blade to the sword-boss brown and its muzzle powder-black:
    And Rifleman Brown said never a word; yet he felt in the soul of his soul
    His right to the beer of the lower Hall, though he came to drink of it whole;
    His right to the fags of the free canteen, to a seat at the banquet board
    Though he came to the men who had killed