52 THE HORSE AND THE WAR 



Many months at a time I was up on the Somme 

 In the rain and the mud and the mire : 

 We were " packing " the sheUs to the various Hells 

 In the dips of the vast undulations and dells 

 Where the field guns were belching their fire. 



It was very poor sport when the forage ran short 

 First to eight and then six pounds a day. 

 But we managed to live on the blankets they brought, 

 Though blankets I now think, and always have thought. 

 Are but poor substitution for hay. 



I remember a week when we played hide and seek 

 With the shrapnel the Boches sent over : 

 I remember the night when they pitied my plight, 

 And pipped me, and put me clean out of the fight 

 With a " Blighty " — then I was in clover. 



For they dressed me and sent me quick out of the line 

 To a hospital down at the Base, 

 ; Where the standings were good and the weather was fine 



And the rations were not a disgrace : 

 There, just within sound of the Heavies I found 

 La France can be quite a good place. 



And now I've recovered — I'm weary and thin 

 ' And I'm out of condition and stale, 



My ribs and my hips are too big for my skin 

 And I've left all the hair of my tail 

 On the middlemost bar of the paddock I'm in. 

 For they turned me out loose, as I'm frail. 



Now the life in a paddock according to men 



Is a sort of a beautiful song 



Where animals wander around and can squander 



The time as they wander along, 



With nothing to worry them, nothing to do 



Except for food intervals daily ; but you 



Can take it from me they are wrong, 



For paddocks are places conducive to thoughts 



That settle unbid on the brain, 



And often I find them to follow a kind 



Of a minor-key tune or refrain 



As I doze for an hour in the afternoon sun 



Or I stand with my rump to the rain 



I dream of the barn on my Illinois farm 



And I long to be back there again. 



■ — L. L. L. L., Base Indian Remount Depot, B.E.F., France. 



