Highlights from "Any Soldier to His Son"

Parts of what seems like a long, (nearly) epic poem by a British Tommy shows up online in pieces at numerous sites online. Sometimes they are attributed to Anonymous and sometimes to a chap named George Willis, about whom there are never any details.  Here are some of my favorite parts.

What did I do, sonny, in the Great World War?

Well, I learned to peel potatoes and to scrub the barrack floor.

I learned to push a barrow and I learned to swing a pick,

I learned to turn my toes out, and to make my eyeballs click.

I learned the road to Folkestone, and I watched the English shore,

Go down behind the skyline, as I thought, for evermore. . . 

I learned to wash in shell holes and to shave myself in tea,

While the fragments of a mirror did a balance on my knee.

I learned to dodge the whizz-bangs and the flying lumps of lead,

And to keep a foot of earth between the sniper and my head.

I learned to keep my haversack well filled with buckshee food,

To take the Army issue and to pinch what else I could.

I learned to cook Maconochie with candle-ends and string,

With "four-by-two" and sardine-oil and any God-dam thing.

I learned to use my bayonet according as you please

For a breadknife or a chopper or a prong for toasting cheese. . .

I learned to sleep by snatches on the firestep of a trench,

And to eat my breakfast mixed with mud and Fritz's heavy stench.

I learned to pray for Blighty ones and lie and squirm with fear,

When Jerry started strafing and the Blighty ones were near.

I learned to write home cheerful with my heart a lump of lead

With the thought of you and mother, when she heard that I was dead.

And the only thing like pleasure over there I ever knew,

Was to hear my pal come shouting, "There's a parcel, mate, for you" . . .

So much for what I did do - now for what I have not done:

Well, I never kissed a French girl and I never killed a Hun,

I never missed an issue of tobacco, pay, or rum,

I never made a friend and yet I never lacked a chum.

I never borrowed money, and I never lent - but once

(I can learn some sorts of lessons though I may be borne a dunce).

I never used to grumble after breakfast in the Line

That the eggs were cooked too lightly or the bacon cut too fine.

I never told a sergeant just exactly what I thought,

I never did a pack-drill, for I never quite got caught.

I never punched a Red-Cap's nose (be prudent like your Dad),

But I'd like as many sovereigns as the times I've wished I had.

I never stopped a whizz-bang, though I've stopped a lot of mud,

But the one that Fritz sent over with my name on was a dud.  . .

You'd like to be a soldier and go to France some day?

By all the dead in Delville Wood, by all the nights I lay

Between our lines and Fritz's before they brought me in;

By this old wood-and-leather stump, that once was flesh and skin;

By all the lads who crossed with me but never crossed again,

By all the prayers their mothers and their sweethearts prayed in vain,

Before the things that were that day should ever more befall

May God in common pity destroy us one and all!

The most complete version of this verse I've found can be located HERE.