Bombardment[]
German trench captured after bombardment by British Artiller, Battle of the Somme, July 1916. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.
Four days the earth was rent and torn
By bursting steel,
The houses fell about us;
Three nights we dared not sleep,
Sweating, and listening for the imminent crash
Which meant our death.
The fourth night every man,
Nerve-tortured, racked to exhaustion,
Slept, muttering and twitching,
While the shells crashed overhead.
The fifth day there came a hush;
We left our holes
And looked above the wreckage of the earth
To where the white clouds moved in silent lines
Across the untroubled blue.
TERRY BUTCHER reads Bombardment - Richard Aldington
This poem is in the public domain