We'd found an old Boche dug-out, and he knew,
And gave us hell, for shell on frantic
Hammered on top, but never quite burst through.
Rain, guttering down in waterfalls of slime,
Kept slush waist-high and rising hour by hour,
And choked the steps too thick with clay to climb.
What murk of air remained stank old, and
With fumes of whizz-bangs, and the smell of
Who'd lived there years, and left their curse in the den,
If not their corpses…There we herded from the
Of whizz-bangs, but one found our door at last,
Buffeting eyes and breath, snuffing the candles,
And thud! flump! thud! down the steep steps came
And sploshing in the flood, deluging muck -The sentry's body; then his rifle,
Of old Boche bombs, and mud in ruck on ruck.
We dredged him up, for killed, until he whined'O sir, my eyes - I'm blind, - I'm blind,
I'm blind!'Coaxing,
I held a flame against his
And said if he could see the least blurred
He was not blind; in time he'd get all right.'I can't' he sobbed.
Eyeballs, huge-bulged like squids',
Watch my dreams still; but I forgot him
In posting Next for duty, and sending a
To beg a stretcher somewhere, and flound'ring
To other posts under the shrieking air.
Those other wretches, how they bled and spewed,
And one who would have drowned himself for good, -I try not to remember these things now.
Let dread hark back for one word only:
Half-listening to that sentry's moans and jumps,
And the wild chattering of his broken teeth,
Renewed most horribly whenever
Pummelled the roof and slogged the air beneath, -Through the dense din,
I say, we heard him shout'I see your lights!' But ours had long died out.
Owen draws upon his own experiences in writing this poem.
This is an extract from a letter of his to his mother about eighteen months before the poem was writen."In the Platoon on my left the sentries over the dug-out were blown to nothing.
One of these poor fellows was my first servant whom I rejected.
If I had kept him he would have lived, for servants don't do Sentry Duty.
I kept my own sentries half way down the stairs during the more terrific bombardment.
In spite of this one lad was blown down and,
I am afraid, blinded."
