The Happy Warrior Read Online Free PDF Page B

their man with never a man to his sword.
    â€œWho speaks for the stranger Rifleman, O boys of the free canteen?
    Who passes the chap with the unmaimed limbs and the kit that is far too clean?”
    The gashed heads eyed him above their beers, the gashed lips sucked at their smoke:
    There were three at the board of his own platoon, but not a man of them spoke.
    His mouth was mad for the tankard froth and the biting whiff of a fag
    But he knew he might not speak for himself to the dead men who do not brag.
    A gun-butt crashed on the gate-way, a man came staggering in;
    His head was cleft with a great red wound from the templebone to the chin,
    His blade was dyed to the bayonet-boss with the clots that were scarcely dry,
    And he cried to the men who had killed their man: “Who passes the Rifleman? I!”
    By the four I slew, by the shell I stopped, if my feet be not too late,
    I speak the word for Rifleman Brown, that a chap may speak for a mate.”
    The dead of lower Valhalla, the heroes of dumb renown,
    They pricked their ears to the tale of the earth as they set their tankards down.
    â€œMy mate was on sentry this evening when the General happened along,
    And asked what he would do in a gas attack. Joe told him, “Beat on the gong.”
    â€œWhat else?” “Open fire, Sir,” Joe answered. “Good God, man,” our General said,
    â€œBy the time you’d beaten that bloodstained gong the chances are you’d be dead.
    Just think lad!” “Gas helmet of course, Sir!” “Yes damn it, and gas-helmet first!”
    So Joe stood dumb to attention and wondered why he’d been cursed.
    The gashed heads turned to the Rifleman and now it seemed that they knew
    Why the face that had never a smear of blood was stained to the jawbone blue.
    â€œHe was posted again at midnight.” The scarred heads craned to the voice,
    As the man with the blood-red bayonet spoke up for the mate of his choice.
    â€œYou know what it’s like at a listening post, the Verey candles aflare,
    Their bullets smacking the sand-bags, our Vickers combing your hair,
    How your ears and your eyes get jumpy till each known tuft that you scan
    Moves and crawls in the shadows till you’d almost swear it was a man;
    You know how you peer and snuff at the night when the north east gas-wind blows.”
    â€œBy the One who made us and maimed us,” quoth lower Valhalla, “we know.”
    Sudden, out of the blackness, sudden as hell there came
    Roar and rattle of rifles, spurts of machine-gun flame;
    And Joe stood up in the forward sap to try and fathom the game.
    Sudden, their shells came screaming; sudden, his nostrils sniff
    The sickening reek of the rotten pears the death that kills with a whiff.
    Death! And he knows it certain, as he bangs on his cartridge-case,
    While the gas-cloud claws at his windpipe and the gas-cloud wings on his face.
    We heard his gong in our dugout, he only whacked on it twice,
    We whipped our gas-bags over our heads, and manned the steps in thrice
    For the cloud would have caught us as sure as Fate if he’d taken the Staff’s advice.
    His head was cleft with a great red wound from the chin to the templebone
    But his voice was as clear as a sounding gong, “I’ll be damned if I’ll drink alone!
    Not even in lower Valhalla! Is he free of your free canteen,
    My mate who comes with the unfleshed point and the full-charged magazine?”
    The gashed heads rose at the Rifleman o’er the rings of the Endless Smoke,
    And as the roar of a thousand guns, Valhalla’s answer broke,
    And loud as the crash of a thousand shells their tankards clashed on the board:
    â€œHe is free of the mess of the Killer-men, your mate of the unfleshed sword;
    â€œFor we know the worth of his deed on earth; as we know the speed of the death
    Which catches its man by the back of the throat and gives him water for breath;
    As we know how the hand at the