The Sentry

We’d found an old Boche dug-out, and he knew,
______ gave us hell, for shell on frantic shell
Hammered ______ top, but never quite burst through.
Rain, guttering down ______ waterfalls of slime
Kept slush waist high, that rising ______ by hour,
Choked up the steps too thick with ______ to climb.
What murk of air remained stank old, ______ sour
With fumes of whizz-bangs, and the smell of ______
Who’d lived there years, and left their curse in ______ den,
If not their corpses...
                        There ______ herded from the blast
Of whizz-bangs, but one found ______ door at last.
Buffeting eyes and breath, snuffing the candles.
And thud! flump! thud! down the steep steps came ______
And splashing in the flood, deluging muck —
The sentry’s body; then his rifle, handles
Of old Boche bombs, ______ mud in ruck on ruck.
We dredged him up, ______ killed, until he whined
“O sir, my eyes — I’m blind — I’m blind, I’m blind!”
Coaxing, I ______ a flame against his lids
And said if he ______ see the least blurred light
He was not blind; ______ time he’d get all right.
“I can’t,” he sobbed. Eyeballs, huge-bulged like squids
Watch my dreams still; but ______ forgot him there
In posting next for duty, and ______ a scout
To beg a stretcher somewhere, and floundering ______
To other posts under the shrieking air.

Those other wretches, how they bled and spewed,
And one who would ______ drowned himself for good, —
I try not to ______ these things now.
Let dread hark back for one ______ only: how
Half-listening to that sentry’s moans and jumps,
______ the wild chattering of his broken teeth,
Renewed most ______ whenever crumps
Pummelled the roof and slogged the air ______ —
Through the dense din, I say, we heard ______ shout
“I see your lights!” But ours had ______ died out.

And And I about and and beneath clay could for have held him horribly hour in in long men on our remember sending the thumping we word