To tell me what to do.”

Here’s a youngster sprawled in an old shell hole

With a Chauchat at his eye;

There’s some wide H.E. on the next O.P.

And a Fokker in the sky.

It’s a hundred yards to his jump-off trench

And ten to the German wire,

But what does he hear, more loud and clear

Than the crack of harassing fire?

Echoed footsteps on the marble