Out of Flanders

THREE of us sat on the firing bench
Watching the clouds sail by —
Watching the gray dawn blowing up
Like smoke across the sky.
And I thought, as I listened to London Joe
Tell of his leave in town,
That’s good vers libre with a Cockney twang;
I’ll remember, and write it down.

W’en I went ’ome on furlough,
My missus says to me, ‘Joe,
’Ow many ’Uns ’ave you killed?’
An’ I says to ’er, ‘’Uns?’
Not thinkin’ just wot she meant.
‘Yes, ’Uns!’ she says, ‘them sneakin’, low-lived ’Uns!’
Bitter? Not ’arf, she ain’t!
An’ they’re all the same w’y in Lunnon.

My old mate Bill, who’s lame
An’ could n’t enlist on that account,
’E staked me to a pint of ale
At the Red Lion. Proper stuff it was
Arter this flat French beer.
‘Well, ’ere’s to old times!’ says Bill,
Raisin’ ’is glass,
‘An’ bad luck to the ’Uns you’ve sent below!
’Ow many you think you did for, Joe?’
’E arsked if I’d shot an’ seen ’em fall,
Wanted the de-tails an wanted ’em all!

An’ there was my old boss in Balham,
Gave me a quid w’ich I took, willin’ enough,
Although I made a stall at refusin’.
‘That’s all right, Joe boy! Glad to do it!
It ain’t much, but it’ll ’elp you to ’ave a pleasant week.
But w’en you goes back to the trenches,
I wants you to take a crack at the ’Uns fer me!
Get me a German fer ev’ry penny in that sovereign!’ ’e says,
Smashin’ ’is fist on the table
An’ upsettin’ a bottle o’ ink.
‘Lay ’em out!’ ’e says;
‘Now tell me, ’ow many you killed, about?’

Speakin’ o’ ’ymns o’ ’ate,
They sings ’em in Lunnon, I’m tellin’ you straight!
You ought to see their faces w’en they arsks you about the ’Uns!
Lor’ lummy! They ain’t 'arf a bloodthirsty lot!
An’ the wimmen as bad as the men.
I was glad to get back to the trenches again
W’ere there’s more of a ’uman feelin’.

Now, us blokes out ’ere,
We knows old Fritzie ain’t so bad as ’e’s painted
(An’ likely, they knows the same about us).
Wot I mean is, ’e ain’t no worse than wot we are,
Take ’im man fer man.
There’s good an’ bad on both sides.
But do you think you can s’y anything good
About a German, w’en yer in Lunnon?
Strike me pink! They won’t believe you!
’E’s a ’Un, wotever that is,
Some kind o’ wild beast, I reckon,—
A cross between a snake
An’ one o’ them boars with ’orns on their noses
Out at Regent’s Park Zoo.

One night at the Red Lion,
I was talkin’ about the time
Nobby Clark got ’it out in front of our barbed wire.
Remember ’ow we did n’t find ’im till mornin’,
An’ the stretcher-bearers brought ’im in;
Broad daylight it was,
An’ not a German firin’ a shot
Till we got ’im back in the trench?
Well, they was fifteen or twenty in the pub,
An’ not one of ’em was glad old Fritzie acted w’ite!
Would n’t that give you the camel’s ’ump?
They’d sooner ’ad Nobby an’ the stretcher-bearers killed,
If only the ’Uns, as they call ’em,
’Ad played dirty an’ fired w’ile they was bringin’ ’im in.

Another time I was a-tellin’ ’em
’Ow we shout back an’ forth acrost the trenches
W’en the lines is close together,
An’ we gets fed up with pluggin’ at each other.
An’ I told ’em ’bout the place
This side o’ Messines, w’ere we was only twenty yards apart,
An’ ’ow they chucked us over some o’ their black bread,
Arter we’d thrown ’em a ’arf dozen tins o’ bully.
Some of ’em did n’t believe me an’ some did.
But sour? S’y! ’Ere! They was ready to kill me
Fer tryin’ to make out that Fritzie’s a ’uman bein’!

It’s a funny thing. The farther you gets from the trenches
The more ’ate you finds;
An’ by the time you gets to Lunnon —
Blimy! They could bite the ’eads offen nails
If they was made in Germany.
I reckon they’re just as cheerful an’ lovin’-like in Berlin.
Give us a fag, son. I’m clean out.