64488: Night March
Creators: name: Project Team, First World War Poetry Digital Archive
Publisher: name: University of Oxford
Year: 2024
Subjects: classificationCode: 430304
subject: British history
classificationCode: 430308
subject: European history (excl. British, classical Greek and Roman)
classificationCode: 430316
subject: International history

description: Evening: beneath tall poplar trees<br> We soldiers eat and smoke and sprawl,<br> Write letters home, enjoy our ease,<br> When suddenly comes a ringing call.<br> 'Fall in!' A stir, and up we jump,<br> Fold the love letter, drain the cup,<br> We toss away the Woodbine stump,<br> Snatch at the pack and jerk it up.<br> Soon with a roaring song we start,<br> Clattering along a cobbled road,<br> The foot beats quickly like the heart,<br> And shoulders laugh beneath their load.<br> Where are we marching? No one knows,<br> Why are we marching? No one cares.<br> For every man follows his nose,<br> Towards the gay West where sunset flares.<br> An hour's march: we halt: forward again,<br> Wheeling down a small road through trees.<br> Curses and stumbling: puddled rain<br> Shines dimly, splashes feet and knees.<br> Silence, disquiet: from those trees<br> Far off a spirit of evil howls.<br> 'Down to the Somme' wail the banshees<br> With the long mournful voice of owls.<br> The trees are sleeping, their souls gone,<br> But in this time of slumbrous trance<br> Old demons of the night take on<br> Their windy foliage, shudder and dance.<br> Out now: the land is bare and wide,<br> A grey sky presses overhead.<br> Down to the Somme! In fields beside<br> Our tramping column march the dead.<br> Our comrades who at Festubert<br> And Loos and Ypres lost their lives,<br> In dawn attacks, in noonday glare,<br> On dark patrols from sudden knives.<br> Like us they carry packs, they march<br> In fours, they sling their rifles too,<br> But long ago they've passed the arch<br> Of death where we must yet pass through.<br> Seven miles: we halt awhile, then on!<br> I curse beneath my burdening pack<br> Like Sinbad when with sigh and groan<br> He bore the old man on his back.<br> A big moon shines across the road,<br> Ten miles: we halt: now on again<br> Drowsily marching; the sharp goad<br> Blunts to a dumb and sullen pain.<br> A man falls out: we others go<br> Ungrudging on, but our quick pace<br> Full of hope once, grows dull, and slow:<br> No talk: nowhere a smiling face.<br> Above us glares the unwinking moon,<br> Beside us march the silent dead:<br> My train of thought runs mazy, soon<br> Curious fragments crowd my head.<br> I puzzle old things learned at school,<br> Half riddles, answerless, yet intense,<br> A date, an algebraic rule,<br> A bar of music with no sense.<br> We win the fifteenth mile by strength<br> 'Halt!' the men fall, and where they fall,<br> Sleep. 'On!' the road uncoils its length;<br> Hamlets and towns we pass them all.<br> False dawn declares night nearly gone:<br> We win the twentieth mile by theft.<br> We're charmed together, hounded on,<br> By the strong beat of left, right, left.<br> Pale skies and hunger: drizzled rain:<br> The men with stout hearts help the weak,<br> Add a new rifle to their pain<br> Of shoulder, stride on, never speak.<br> We win the twenty-third by pride:<br> My neighbour's face is chalky white.<br> Red dawn: a mocking voice inside<br> 'New every morning', 'Fight the good fight'.<br> Now at the top of a rounded hill<br> We see brick buildings and church spires.<br> Nearer they loom and nearer, till<br> We know the billet of our desires.<br> Here the march ends, somehow we know.<br> The step quickens, the rifles rise<br> To attention: up the hill we go<br> Shamming new vigour for French eyes.<br> So now most cheerily we step down<br> The street, scarcely withholding tears<br> Of weariness: so stir the town<br> With all the triumph of Fusiliers.<br> Breakfast to cook, billets to find,<br> Scrub up and wash (down comes the rain),<br> And the dark thought in every mind<br> 'To-night they'll march us on again.'