Groping along the tunnel, step by step, <br />He winked his prying torch with patching glare <br />From side to side, and sniffed the unwholesome air. <br /> <br />Tins, boxes, bottles, shapes too vague to know, <br />A mirror smashed, the mattress from a bed; <br />And he, exploring fifty feet below <br />The rosy gloom of battle overhead. <br />Tripping, he grapped the wall; saw someone lie <br />Humped at his feet, half-hidden by a rug, <br />And stooped to give the sleeper's arm a tug. <br />'I'm looking for headquarters.' No reply. <br />'God blast your neck!' (For days he'd had no sleep.) <br />'Get up and guide me through this stinking place.' <br />Savage, he kicked a soft, unanswering heap, <br />And flashed his beam across the livid face <br />Terribly glaring up, whose eyes yet wore <br />Agony dying hard ten days before; <br />And fists of fingers clutched a blackening wound. <br />Alone he staggered on until he found <br />Dawn's ghost that filtered down a shafted stair <br />To the dazed, muttering creatures underground <br />Who hear the boom of shells in muffled sound. <br />At last, with sweat of horror in his hair, <br />He climbed through darkness to the twilight air, <br />Unloading hell behind him step by step.<br /><br />Siegfried Sassoon<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-rear-guard-2/
