Nine-Thirty o’clock? Then over the top,
And mind to keep down when you see the flare
Of Very pistol searching the air.
Now, over you get; look out for the wire
In the borrow pit, and the empty tins,
They are meant for the Hun to bark his shins.
So keep well down and reserve your fire–
All over? Right: there’s a gap just here
In the corkscrew wire, so just follow me;
If you keep well down there’s nothing to fear.
. . . . . . . . .
Then out we creep thro’ the gathering gloom
Of NO MAN’S LAND, while the big guns boom
Right over our heads, and the rapid crack
Of the Lewis guns is answered back
By the German barking the same refrain
Of crack, crack, crack, all over again.
To the wistful eye from the parapet,
In the smiling sun of a summer’s day,
‘Twere a sin to believe that a bloody death
In those waving grasses lurking lay.
But now, ‘neath the Very’s fitful flares
“Keep still, my lads, and freeze like hares;–
All right, carry on, for we’re out to enquire
If our friend the Hun’s got a gap in his wire;
And he hasn’t invited us out, you see,
So lift up your feet and follow me.”
. . . . . . . . .
Then, silent, we press with a noiseless tread
Thro’ no man’s land, but the sightless dead;
Aye, muffle your footsteps, well ye may,
For the mouldering corpses here decay
Whom no man owns but the King abhorred,
Grim Pluto, Stygia’s over-lord.
Oh breathe a prayer for the sightless Dead
Who have bitten the dust ‘neath the biting lead
Of the pitiless hail of the Maxim’s fire,
‘Neath the wash of shell in the well trod mire.
Ah well! But we’ve, too, got a job to be done,
For we’ve come to the wire of our friend, the Hun.
“Now, keep well down, lads; can you see any gap?”
. . . . . . . . .
Not much, well the reference is wrong in the map”
So homeward we go thro’ the friendly night.
That covers the NO MAN’S LAND from sight,
As muttering a noiseless prayer of praise,
We drop from the parapet into the bays.
On 8th August 1916 there was a Battalion order ‘A Patrol will leave tonight to examine gap in German wire at C15 b 8.2’. Beckh wrote ‘No Man’s Land’ after reading the order. A Deep Cry: First World War Soldier-Poets Killed in France and Flanders, edited by Anne Powell, p. 116.