AMMUNITION COLUMN

I am only a cog in a giant machine, a link of an endless chain:—

And the rounds are drawn, and the rounds are fired, and the empties return again;

‘ Railroad, lorry, and limber; battery, column, and park;

‘ To the shelf where the set fuse waits the breech, from the quay where the shells embark.

We have watered and fed, and eaten our beef; the long dull day drags by,

As I sit here watching our “Archibalds” strafing an empty sky;

Puff and flash on the far-off blue round the speck one guesses the plane —

Smoke and spark of the gun-machine that is fed by the endless chain.

I am only a cog in a giant machine, a little link in the chain,

Waiting a word from the wagon-lines that the guns are hungry again:—

Column-wagon to battery-wagon, and battery-wagon to gun;

To the loader kneeling‘ twixt trail and wheel from the shops where the steam-lathes run.

There's a lone mule braying against the line where the mud cakes fetlock-deep!

There's a lone soul humming a hint of a song in the barn where the drivers sleep;

And I hear the pash of the orderly's horse as he canters him down the lane —

Another cog in the gun-machine, a link in the selfsame chain.

I am only a cog in a giant machine, but a vital link in the chain;

And the Captain has sent from the wagon-line to fill his wagons again;—

From wagon-limber to gunpit dump; from loader's forearm at breech

To the working party that melts away when the shrapnel bullets screech.—

So the restless section pulls out once more in column of route from the right,

At the tail of a blood-red afternoon; so the flux of another night

Bears back the wagons we fill at dawn to the sleeping column again...

Cog on cog in the gun-machine, link on link in the chain!