In The Pink
So Davies wrote: ‘This leaves me in the pink’.
Then scrawled his name: ‘Your loving sweetheart, Willie’.
With crosses for a hug. He’d had a drink
Of rum and tea; and, though the barn was chilly,
For once his blood ran warm; he had pay to spend.
Winter was passing; soon the year would mend.
But he couldn’t sleep that night; stiff in the dark
He groaned and thought of Sundays at the farm,
And how he’d go as cheerful as a lark
In his best suit, to wander arm in arm
With brown-eyed Gwen, and whisper in her ear
The simple, silly things she liked to hear.
And then he thought: to-morrow night we trudge
Up to the trenches, and my boots are rotten.
Five miles of stodgy clay and freezing sludge,
And everything but wretchedness forgotten.
To-night he’s in the pink; but soon he’ll die.
And still the war goes on—he don’t know why.
Siegfried Sassoon Feb 1916
I have recently visited some memorials in France to pay respects to family members who never made it through Somme/Arras/Cambrais. Some were jolly unlucky chappies, having survived the Somme first time round only to fail the second time in 1918.
The cemeteries are still beautifully preserved and hats off to the French for keeping them that way.