The Sentry
Wilfred Owen
1893 to 1918
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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.