# A Working Party

Three hours ago he blundered up the trench,

Sliding and poising, groping with his boots;

Sometimes he tripped and lurched against the walls

With hands that pawed the sodden bags of chalk.

He couldn’t see the man who walked in front;

Only he heard the drum and rattle of feet

Stepping along the trench-boards,—often splashing

Wretchedly where the sludge was ankle-deep.

Voices would grunt, “Keep to your right,—make way!”

When squeezing past the men from the front-line:

White faces peered, puffing a point of red;

Candles and braziers glinted through the chinks

And curtain-flaps of dug-outs; then the gloom

Swallowed his sense of sight; he stooped and swore

Because a sagging wire had caught his neck.

A flare went up; the shining whiteness spread

And flickered upward, showing nimble rats,

And mounds of glimmering sand-bags, bleached with rain;

Then the slow, silver moment died in dark.

The wind came posting by with chilly gusts

And buffeting at corners, piping thin

And dreary through the crannies; rifle-shots

Would split and crack and sing along the night,

And shells came calmly through the drizzling air

To burst with hollow bang below the hill.

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