INSPIRATIONS ON THE BATTLEFIELD

On an American YMCA letterhead marked for those:

ON ACTIVE SERVICE
with the
AMERICAN EXPEDITIONARY FORCE

June Lodeen Lehnherr transcribed the the following prose from the Paris Edition of the New York Herald with the following added remark:

It Tells the Story Pretty Clearly

A slogging bunch with a job to do,
A job in the main that was dripping red;
No swift advance, with a breaking thru,
To cheer them on to the goal ahead;
But a dreary drive and a killing push,
Into the sweep of a deadly fire
From machine gun nests in the clotted bush,
Thru bloody mud and a mass of wire.

A slogging bunch in a grip with fate,
Where life was a span from breath to breath,
Where every foot meant a missing mate,
And every yard held the smell of death!
No gallant dash to an open goal,
But a sodden tramp thru the crashing shell,
Thru dawns as stark as a broken soul
Thru nights as dark as the mouth of hell.

A slogging bunch thru the endless hail,
Where the line...iron-gutted held its advance,
With its share of graves out the matted trail,
That moved along thru the woods of France.
With a moments pause where a mate might kneel,
By a fallen pal who had paid his debt,
Where the battered Boche knew the flash of steel
Was the glint of a Yankee bayonet.

A slogging bunch with a job to do;
No sudden leap with its cheering thrill
But a gunner's  work with a redder hue!

The above was written in my father's handwriting, and from the letterhead and yellowish age of the paper it was obviously written (copied) while he was in a rest period between duty on the battle front.

Bob Lehnherr

June Lodeen Lehnherr in World War I | Discharge (Front) | Discharge (Back)
Inspiration on the Battlefront | War in Mexico