Trudging by Corbie Ridge one winter's night, <br />(Unless old hearsay memories tricked his sight) <br />Along the pallid edge of the quiet sky <br />He watched a nosing lorry grinding on, <br />And straggling files of men; when these were gone, <br />A double limber and six mules went by, <br />Hauling the rations up through ruts and mud <br />To trench-lines digged two hundred years ago. <br />Then darkness hid them with a rainy scud, <br />And soon he saw the village lights below. <br /> <br />But when he'd told his tale, an old man said <br />That he'd seen soldiers pass along that hill; <br />'Poor silent things, they were the English dead <br />Who came to fight in France and got their fill.'<br /><br />Siegfried Sassoon<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/two-hundred-years-after/
