n' countered with a
lovely flight of bats,
Then rushed in close formation, heavin' cot-
tages, n' tore
Through blinded, bleedin' Bosches, 'n' lor
love yeh, it was war!

We came peltin', headfirst, 'elpless, in a drain
among a lot
Of dirty, damned old Tommies (Gord! The
best that ever blew!)
Eight left of us, all punctured, each man
holdin' what he'd got.
Me wild, a rat hole in me lung, but in me
mauley, too,
A bull-nosed brick with whiskers where no
whiskers ever grew.

There's nothin' doin' now. I wear me blan-
kets like a toff.
The way this fat nurse pets me, strewth, it's
well to be so sick,
A-dreamin' of our contract 'n' the way we
pulled it off.
I reckon Haig is phonin' Hughes: "Hullo,
there, Billy. Quick--
A dozen of the pushes and a thousan' tons
of brick!"

MUD.

THIS war's a waste of slurry, and its at-
mosphere is mud,
All is bog from here to sunset. Wadin'
through
We're the victims of a thicker sort of universal
flood,
With discomforts that old Noah never knew.

We have dubbed our trench The Cecil.
There's a brass-plate and a dome,
And a quagmire where the doormat used
to be,
If you're calling, second Tuesday is our reg'-
lar day at home,
So delighted if you'll toddle in to tea!

There is mud along the corridors enough to
bog a cow;
In the air there hangs a musty kind of
woof;
There's a frog-pond in the parlour, and the
kitchen is a slough.
She has neither doors nor windows, nor a
roof.

When they post our bald somnambulist as
missing from his flat
We take soundings for the digger with a
prop.
By the day the board is gratis, by the week
it's half of that;
For the season there's a corresponding drop.

Opening off the spacious hallway is my natty
little suite,
A commodious and accessible abode.
By judicious disposition, with exclusion of
my feet,
There is sleeping room for Oliver the toad.

Though the ventilation's gusty, and in gobs
the ceiling falls--
Which with oral respiration disagrees--
Though there comes a certain quantity of
seepage from the walls,
There are some I knew in diggings worse
than these.

On my right is Cobber Carkeek. There's a
spring above his head,
And his mattress is a special kind of clay.
He's a most punctilious bloke about the
fashion of