THE YOUNG GUARD – World War I Poems & Author's Memoirs from The Great War. E. W. Hornung
their post,
Yet he sang such a song at the Y.M.C.A.
That the C.O. turned green as a ghost!
Less the song than the stance,
And the dissolute dance,
Drew a glance so askance
That . . . they packed him to France,
Little Ginger.
Next month, to the haunts of fine Ladies and Lords
I ventured, in Grosvenor Square:
The stateliest chambers were hospital wards—
And ruddy young Ginger was there.
In spite of his hurts he looked never so red,
Nor ever less shy or sedate,
Though his hair had been cropped (by machine- gun, he said)
And bandages turbaned his pate.
He was mostly in holes—but his cheek was intact!
I could not but notice, with joy,
The loveliest Sisters had most to transact
With ruddy young Ginger—some boy!
Slaying Huns by the tons,
With a smile like a nun's—
Oh! of all the brave ones,
All the sons of our guns—
Give me Ginger!
The Ballad of Ensign Joy
(1917)
Solomon cited wonders three; One was the way of a ship at sea, One was the way of a mighty bird, And the way of a serpent was the third. But Solomon (since he was in the trade) Appended the way of a man with a maid: And Solomon (still in the flesh) might add The way of a maid with a soldier lad.
This is the story of Ensign Joy
(And the obsolete rank withal
That I love for each gentle English boy
Who jumped to his country's call.
By their fire and fun, and the deeds they've done,
I would gazette them Second to none Who faces a gun in Gaul!)
It is also the story of Ermyntrude
(A less appropriate name
For an idealistic Academy prude;
But under it, all the same,
The usual consanguineous squad
Had made her an honest child of God,
And cannot be held to blame).
It was just when the grind of the Special Reserves,
Employed upon Coast Defence,
Was getting on every Ensign's nerves—
Sick-keen to be drafted hence—
That they met and played tennis and danced and sang,
The lad with the laugh and the schoolboy slang,
The girl with the eyes intense.
Yet it wasn't for him that she languished and sighed,
But for all of our dear doomed youth;
And it wasn't for her, but her sex, that he cried,
If he could but have probed the truth.
Did she? She would none of his hot young heart;
As khaki escort he's tall and smart,
As lover a shade uncouth.
He went with his draft. She returned to her craft.
He wrote in his merry vein;
She read him aloud, and the Studio laughed!
(Ermyntrude bore the strain.)
He was full of gay bloodshed and Old Man Fritz
His flippancy sent her friends into fits.
(Ermyntrude frowned with pain.)
His tales of the Sergeant who swore so hard
Left Ermyntrude cold and prim;
The tactless truth of the picture jarred,
And some of his jokes were grim.
Yet, let him but skate upon tender ice,
And he had to write to her twice or thrice
Before she would answer him.
(Yet once she sent him a fairy's box,
And her pocket felt the brunt
Of tinned contraptions and books and socks—
Which he hailed as " a sporting stunt!"
She slaved at his muffler none the less,
And still took pleasure in murmuring, " Yes—
For a friend of mine at the Front")
One fine morning his name appears—
Looking so pretty in print!
"Wounded!" she warbles in tragedy tears—
And pictures the reddening lint,
The drawn damp face and the draggled hair . . .
But she found him blooming in Belgrave Square,
With a punctured shin in a splint.
It wasn't a haunt of Ermyntrude's,
That grandiose urban pile;
Like starlight in arctic altitudes
Was the stately Sister's smile.
Tropical sunshine was Ensign Joy—
In his golden greeting no least alloy—
In his beaming eyes no guile.
He showed her the bullet that did the trick—
He showed her the trick, X-ray'd;
He showed her a table timed to a tick,
And a map that an airman made.
He spoke of a shell that caused grievous loss—
But he never mentioned a certain Cross
For his part in the camisade.
She saw it herself in a list next day,
And it brought her back to his bed
With a number of beautiful things to say,
Which were mostly over his head.
Turned pink as his own pyjamas' stripe,
To her mind he ceased to embody a type—
Sank into her heart instead.
"I wonder that all of you didn't retire!"
"My blighters were not that kind."
"But it says you —' advanced under murderous fire,
Machine-gun and shell combined '—"
"Oh, that's the regular War Office wheeze! "
"'Advanced '—with that leg!—' on his hands and knees'!"
"I couldn't leave it behind."
He was soon trick-driving an invalid chair,
And dancing about on a crutch.
The haute noblesse still in Belgrave Square Were moved to oblige as such. They sent him for many a motor-whirl— With the wistful, willowy, wisp of a girl Who never again lost touch.
Their