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| Huntingdon War Memorial 'The Thinking Soldier' |
Joining-Up
No, not for you the glamour of emprise,
Poor driven lad with terror in your eyes.
No dream of wounds and medals and renown
Called you like Love from your drab Northern town.
No haunting fife, dizzily shrill and sweet,
Came lilting drunkenly down your dingy street.
You will not change, with a swift catch of the pride,
In the cold hit among the leers and oaths,
Out of your suit of frayed civilian clothes,
Into the blase of khaki they provide.
Like a trapped animal you crouch and choke
In the packed carriage where the veterans smoke
And tell such pitiless takes of Over There,
They stop your heart dead short and freeze your hair.
Your body's like a flower on a snapt stalk,
Your head hangs from your neck as blank as chalk.
What horrors haunt you, head upon your breast!
...O but you'll die as bravely as the rest!
By Louis Golding
Louis Golding (1895-1958) was born in Manchester (my home city), and educated at Manchester Grammar School and, after the war, Queen's College, Oxford. Unfit for combat service, but served with Friend's Ambulance Unit in Salonika and France 1914-1919. He became a prolific novelist, essayist and travel writer. His War Poems appear in Sorrows of War (1919) and Shepherd singing Ragtime, and Other Poems (1921).
For further information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Golding
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