The Delta independent., 1918-07-19
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= ~EAGsr :
BY Corporal Jack Turner

by corporal JACK turner
What tobacco really means to sol
'dier has been voiced in more poetry
good, bad and Indifferent, but always
heartfelt-than almost any other sub
1ect of the war. Here is a poem from
the British army which became SO
popular abroad that it has been re-
printed and widely distributed:
When the cold is making ice cream
of the marrow of your bones;
When you're shaking like a jelly and
your feet are dead as stones;
When your clothes and boots and blan-
kets and your rifle and your kit,
Are soaked from He'll to Breakfast,
and the dugout where you sit
Is leaking like basket and upon the
muddy floor
The water lies in filthy pools. six
inches deep or more:
Tho life seems cold and miserable
and all the world is wet.
You'll always get through somehow
if you've got cigarette.
When you're lying in listening post
way out beyond the wire,
While blasted Hun, behind a gun,
is doing raid fire;
When the bullets whine above your
head and sputter on the ground,
When your eyes are strained for every
move, your ears for every sound
You'd bet your life Hun patrol is
prowling somewhere near:
a shiver runs along your spine that's
very much like fear;
You'll stick it to the finish-but I'll
make little bet,
You'd feel whole lot better if you
had cigarette.
When Fritz is starting something and
his guns are on the bust,
When the parapet goes up in chunks
and settles down in dust;
When the roly-poly ''rum-jar'' comes
a-wobbling thro' the air,
Till it lauds upon a dugout-and the
dugout isn't there;
When the air is full of dust and smoke
and scraps of steel and noise
And you think you're booked for gold
en- crowns and other Heavily joys
When your nerves are all a-tremble,
and your brain is all a-fret,
1t isn't half so hopeless if you've got
cigarette.
When you're waiting for the whistle
and your foot is on the step,
You bluff yourself. it's lots of fun,
and all the time you're hep
To the fact that you may stop one
fore you've gone a dozen feet:
And you wonder what it feels like,
and your thoughts are far from sweet;
Then you think about little grave.
with r. l. p on top,
And you know you've got to go across
-altho' you'd like to stop;
When your backbones limp as water.
and you're bathed in icy sweat;
Why. you'd feel a lot more cheerful
if you'd puff your cigarette.
Then when you stop a good one and
the stretcher bearers come
And patch you up with strings and
splints and bandages and gum;
When you think you've got million
wounds and fifty thousand breaks
And your body's just a blasted sack,
packed full of pains and aches:
Then you feel you've reached the fin
ish, and you're sure your mum
ber's up.
And you feel as weak as Belgian beer,
and helpless as pup
But you know that you're not down
and out. That lifes worth living yet
When some old war-wise Red Cross
guy slips you cigarette
We can do without MacConachies, and
Bully and hard tack,
When Fritz's curtain fire keeps the
ration parties back:
We can do without our greatcoats, and
our socks. and shirts and shoes;
We might almost-tho I doubt it-get
along without our booze:
We can do without our X R. O." aud
Military Law
We can beat the ancient Israelites at
making bricKs. sans straw:
f'e can do without a lot of things
and still win out, you bet.
But I'd hate to think of soldering
without cigarette.