Any Soldier To His Son Poem Rhyme Scheme

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What did I do sonny in the Great World War	A
Well I learned to peel potatoes and to scrub the barrack floor	A
I learned to push a barrow and I learned to swing a pick	B
I learned to turn my toes out and to make my eyeballs click	B
I learned the road to Folkestone and I watched the English shore	A
Go down behind the skyline as I thought for evermore	A
And the Blighty boats went by us and the harbour hove in sight	C
And they landed us and sorted us and marched us by the right	C
Quick march across the cobbles by the kids who rang along	D
Singing Appoo Spearmant Shokolah through dingy old Boulogne	E
By the widows and the nurses and the niggers and Chinese	F
And the gangs of smiling Fritzes as saucy as you please	F
	-
I learned to ride as soldiers ride from Etaps to the Line	E
For days and nights in cattle trucks packed in like droves of swine	E
I learned to curl and kip it on a foot of muddy floor	A
And to envy cows and horses that have beds of beaucoup straw	G
I learned to wash in shell holes and to shave myself in tea	H
While the fragments of a mirror did a balance on my knee	H
I learned to dodge the whizz bangs and the flying lumps of lead	I
And to keep a foot of earth between the sniper and my head	I
I learned to keep my haversack well filled with buckshee food	J
To take the Army issue and to pinch what else I could	K
I learned to cook Maconochie with candle ends and string	L
With four by two and sardine oil and any God dam thing	L
I learned to use my bayonet according as you please	F
For a breadknife or a chopper or a prong for toasting cheese	F
I learned a first field dressing to serve my mate and me	H
As a dish rag and a face rag and a strainer for our tea	H
I learned to gather souvenirs that home I hoped to send	M
And hump them round for months and months and dump them in the end	M
I learned to hunt for vermin in the lining of my shirt	N
To crack them with my finger nail and feel the beggars spirt	N
I learned to catch and crack them by the dozen and the score	A
And to hunt my shirt tomorrow and to find as many more	A
	-
I learned to sleep by snatches on the firestep of a trench	O
And to eat my breakfast mixed with mud and Fritz's heavy stench	O
I learned to pray for Blighty ones and lie and squirm with fear	P
When Jerry started strafing and the Blighty ones were near	P
I learned to write home cheerful with my heart a lump of lead	N
With the thought of you and mother when she heard that I was dead	N
And the only thing like pleasure over there I ever knew	E
Was to hear my pal come shouting There's a parcel mate for you	E
	-
So much for what I did do now for what I have not done	E
Well I never kissed a French girl and I never killed a Hun	E
I never missed an issue of tobacco pay or rum	Q
I never made a friend and yet I never lacked a chum	Q
I never borrowed money and I never lent but once	R
I can learn some sorts of lessons though I may be borne a dunce	R
I never used to grumble after breakfast in the Line	E
That the eggs were cooked too lightly or the bacon cut too fine	E
I never told a sergeant just exactly what I thought	N
I never did a pack drill for I never quite got caught	N
I never punched a Red Cap's nose be prudent like your Dad	N
But I'd like as many sovereigns as the times I've wished I had	N
I never stopped a whizz bang though I've stopped a lot of mud	N
But the one that Fritz sent over with my name on was a dud	N
I never played the hero or walked about on top	S
I kept inside my funk hole when the shells began to drop	S
Well Tommy Jones's father must be made of different stuff	T
I never asked for trouble the issue was enough	T
	-
So I learned to live and lump it in the lovely land of war	A
Where the face of nature seems a monstrous septic sore	A
Where the bowels of earth of earth hang open like the guts of something slain	E
And the rot and wreck of everything are churned and churned again	E
Where all is done in darkness and where all is still in day	N
Where living men are buried and the dead unburied lay	N
Where men inhabit holes like rats and only rats live there	U
Where cottage stood and castle once in days before La Guerre	U
Where endless files of soldiers thread the everlasting way	N
By endless miles of duckboards through endless walls of clay	N
Where life is one hard labour and a soldiers gets his rest	N
When they leave him in the daisies with a puncture in his chest	N
Where still the lark in summer pours her warble from the skies	R
And underneath unheeding lie the blank upstaring eyes	R
	-
And I read the Blighty papers where the warriors of the pen	E
Tell of Christmas in the trenches and The Spirit of our men	E
And I saved the choicest morsels and I read them to my chum	Q
And he muttered as he cracked a louse and wiped it off his thumb	Q
May a thousand chats from Belgium crawl under their fingers as they write	N
May they dream they're not exempted till they faint with mortal fright	N
May the fattest rats in Dickebusch race over them in bed	N
May the lies they've written choke them like a gas cloud till they're dead	N
May the horror and the torture and the things they never tell	V
For they only write to order be reserved for them in Hell	V
	-
You'd like to be a soldier and go to France some day	N
By all the dead in Delville Wood by all the nights I lay	N
Between our lines and Fritz's before they brought me in	E
By this old wood and leather stump that once was flesh and skin	E
By all the lads who crossed with me but never crossed again	E
By all the prayers their mothers and their sweethearts prayed in vain	E
Before the things that were that day should ever more befall	W
May God in common pity destroy us one and all	W

Anonymous English

Any Soldier To His Son Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis

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