'Hello Soldier!', Edward Dyson [i have read the book a hundred times .txt] 📗

soldier lad
The swag of honest liquor that for years he
hasn't 'ad?"

Sez I: "Respeck yer uniform! Remember
oo you are!"
They'd pinched a wicker barrer, 'arf a pram
'n' 'arf a car.
In this ole Bill-o nestled 'neath a blanket, on
his face
A someone's darlin' sorter look, a touch iv
boy'ood's grace.
The gentle ladies stopped to 'ear,
'N' dropped a symperthetic tear,
A dollar or a deener for the pore haff1ict
dear.

The others trucked the wounded to a hentrance
up a lane.
I sez: "Sich conduck's shameful!" Bill-o
took to ease his pain
One long 'un and another. The conductor
picked his brand;
The gripman lent his countenance to wot he
'ad in 'and.
And when they moved their stand 'twas
Sam
Lay pale 'n' peaceful in the pram,
'N' twenty flappers stroked his paw, 'n' said
he was a lamb.

The gathered in the tokens and they blooed
'em as above,
While Jim-o done the hinvalid 'oom Sammy
had to shove.
Sez I: "No noble 'eroes what's bin fightin'
for their king
Should smirch theirselves by doin' this dis-
'onerable thing."
But fine old gents 'n' donahs prim
They stopped 'n' slid the beans to Jim.
You betcher life I let 'im hear just what I
though of 'im.

Nine, g.m. at St. Kilder, saw the finish of the
prowl.
Each 'ad his full-'n'-plentv, and was blowin'
in the tow'l.
As neither bloke cud stand alone, they leaned
'n' argufied
Which was the patient sufferer oo's turn it was
to ride.
Each 'eld a san'wich and a can.
Sez I: "This shouldn't 'ave began-
'Tain't conduck wot it worthy of a soldier and
a man."

I cud 'a' cried with injured pride. Afore a
push the three
Got scrappin', vague 'n' foolish, which the
cripple boy should be.
Sam slips his scientific leg, 'n' flings it in the
drain-
"I'll auto 'ome," he sez, "or never see me
'ome again."
But I am thinkin' 'ard oo he
Tucked 'elpiess in the pram might be.
Comes sudden reckerlection. Great Gohan-
ners, it is me!


REPAIRED

HAULED I was from out the tip
Fritz made with his demonstration,
All broke up, a fractured hip
In me Darby Kell a rip
Settn' up a cool sensation
Like excessive ventilation

One 'and cluttered up a treat-
On me oath you wouldn't know it
From a 'andsome plate of meat.
They had sorter pied me feet,
And a bullet of the foe hit
Where no decent bloke could show it.

'Arf a year they've botched me now;
Ev'ry scientific schemer
In the cor' has faked me prow,
Soled 'n' heeled a bloke somehow-
Gawd, the last one was a screamer.
Wirin' up me flamin' femur!

Comes a guy and pipes you square,
Gogglin' at you through his glasses,
Swings you in the barber's chair,
Tilts you this end up with care,
Lets you have a whiff of gasses
Chattin' off-hand with the lasses.

Then he slices clean 'n' swift,
Like a cobbler cuts his leather,
Gives the splintered knob a lift-
S'elp me tater, it's a gift
How they glues you all together,
Sayin' it's bin nicer weather!

Surgeon wipes his 'ands, a verse
Chort1e softly as he pitches
Probes and sponges to the nurse,
Thinks the lunch might have bin worse;
Close your little gap he hitches,
Whistlin' as he jabs the stitches.

I'm caught in with fiddle-strings,
Stuck about with bits 'n' patches,
Fixed with ligatures 'n' springs,
Lath 'n' plastered, swung in slings
Skewered with little wooden matches,
Hung with hinges, knobs 'n' latches.

Till I lay behind me screen,
Serious 'n' sober one day,
Satisfied 'n' all serene,
'Arf a man 'n' 'arf machine
What they winds up ev'ry Monday
'N' it tilts all ways by Sunday.

'Ome again I'll come, a neat,
Semi-autymatic loafer,
Number up, 'n' all complete,
Creakin' round on Collins Street,
With a licence (which I'll owe for)
My own car and my own shofer!


OUT OF KHAKI.

I SLUNG me khaki suit to-day.
Civilian now front heel to chin
I 'op round on a single shin;
At home in peace I'm bound to stay.
'N' so they've took me duds away.
It 'urt like strippin' off me skin!

I put it on three years ago,
The ole brown rig. There wasn't then
A prouder chicken in the pen.
Jist twenty turned, me nibs you'd know
For how I give me chest a throw,
A man among the best of men.

Me little no the touch I give,
Me chin's ez solid ez a rock,
'N' level with the Town 'All clock,
A five-inch grin across me chiv.
"Lor' love us, this is how to live,"
Sez I, 'n' felt I owned the Block.

Glad eyes was ever on the lurk,
'N' little 'earts was thumpin' warm
For nippers trainin' with the swarm
To swat ole Kaiser Bill, or work
A toe-hold on the heathen Turk.
Fair dink, I loved the uniform!

I soused mine in the brine that day
When Tophet spilt, 'n' in the roar
Of shells that split the sea 'n' tore
Our boats to chips, we broke any
Up through the pelt of leaden spray,
'N' got our first real taste of war.

They shot me tunic all to rags;
Then in the perpendic'lar spree
Me trousers wore off to the knee.
The right-abouts of many bags
Was ground off in the dust 'n' crags
A-sittin' in Gallipoli.

I wore the khaki on the Somme-
Most time 'twas jist a coat of mud;
I once come through the battle scud
Stripped mother-naked by a bomb;
'N' once it' took its color from
Me own 'n' one good cobber's blood.

They cheered the khaki through the street
When we come home with pipers gay,
But now I'm jist a bloke in grey.
Harf-lost, lob-sided, incomplete,
It's nothin' but me spook you'll meet,
Ghost-walkin' in the light o' day.


THE SINGLE-HANDED TEAM

WE'RE more than partners, Ned 'n' me,
Two sections permanently righted.
Yiv seen us on the mooch, maybe,
Like remnants lovin'ly united.
Ned's only got one stump, the left;
By 'appy chance I've got its brother,
Of his two dukes he's been bereft;
My left was mauled, 'n' had to go,
It fortunitly 'appens though,
I kept the other.

Ned lost one ear, the left, 'n' struth,
He dropped the correspondin' weeper.
A Hun he crooled me lovely youth
By bombin' out me right 'and peeper.
He done a guy too with me ear,
The right, 'n' now I dunno whether
'Twas Fate's intention, butt it's clear
When trimmed each as the other's mate
'Twas up to us two, soon or late,
To get together.

'Board ship there's me like arf a peach,
'N' Ned's the other arf, but soon it
Strikes' Bill Carkeek that side by each
We makes a satisfact'rv unit.
A 'andy cobber on the ship
Fakes up for us a set of clutches
That damps us firmly hip to hip.
In seven minutes we can peg
The mile out on a timber leg
'N' two steel crutches.

We now go halves, like Si'mese twins,
'N' as a team I hold we're bosker--
The blighter on the street that grins
Has got to deal with Edwin-Oscar.
At balls we two-step, waltz, 'n' swing,
'N' proppin' walls no one has seen us.
When at the bar I never ring
The double on ole Ned. For both
One hand must serve, 'n', on me oath,
It's fair between us.

We jolt one knife 'n' fork, 'n' find
One horse enough for both to ride on,
And neither feller rides behind.
Some sez we put a pile of side on.
Well, where's the single-handed brace
Will take us on? We'll put the peg in,
Train fine, 'n' jump, or box, or race,
Or wrestle them; 'n' more than that
To clinch a match, so 'elp me cat,
We'll throw a leg in!

He's five feet eight, I'm little less;
He's Roman, I'm a sort of Proddy;
But no sectarian bitterness
Will disunite this sec'lar body--
We're hitched for good, we're two in one.
Our taste's the same, from togs to tipple.
But, straight, it makes me sad, ole son,
To think if he should croak or me,
The pore bloke what is left might be
A bloomin' cripple.


BATTLE PASSES

A QUAINT old gabled cottage sleeps be-
tween the raving hills.
To right and left are livid strife, but on the
deep, wide sills
The purple pot-flowers swell and glow, and
o'er the walls and eaves
Prinked creeper steals caressing hands, the
poplar drips its leaves.
Within the garden hot and sweet
Fair form and woven color meet,
While down the clear, cool stones, 'tween
banks with branch and blossom gay,
A little, bridged, blind rivulet goes touching
out its way.

Peace lingers hidden from the knife, the tear-
ing blinding shell,
Where falls the spattered sunlight on a lichen-
covered well.
No voice is here, no fall of feet, no smoke lifts
cool and grey,
But on the granite stoop a cat blinks vaguely
at the day.
From hill to hill across the vale
Storms man's terrific iron gale;
The