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 COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 
 
RIMES 
 
 IN 
 
 OLIVE DRAB 
 
 By SERGEANT 
 JOHN PIERRE ROCHE 
 

 fEB \\ 1918 
 
 ©CI.A49224G 
 
 A-M) . / 
 
To the American Foreign Legion 
 
 God of might, give me the force of an arm 
 Strong enough to wither when I strike; 
 
 God of right, keep me freed from harm 
 That I may die as I should like. 
 
 I ask no craven's freedom from the toll 
 
 Of the legions marching towards the night, 
 
 But when my name is added to the scroll. 
 Grant I have struck and struck with might. 
 
 God of might, save me from a weakling's spleen, 
 Give me the chance to strike as does a man — 
 
 Not as a cog in a drilled machine. 
 
 But in single fury as a freeman can. 
 
 God of right, do not keep me long 
 
 From skulking death, if it lie in wait. 
 
 Lord, let me shout in Victory's song. 
 Or be swept aside by an equal hate. 
 
 God of might, hear my plea; 
 
 Keep me not from, the strife and fray; 
 Let me strike, O God of right. 
 
 This very day, this very day! 
 
A Polish Alliance 
 
 Romance has come into my life 
 
 And come its way a-winging; 
 Elusive sprite so often sought. 
 
 And so my heart is singing. 
 I never thought that I should meet 
 
 My fate while clad in khaki, 
 Because, remodel as you may, 
 
 This issue stuff is tacky; 
 But love is here and here to stay, 
 
 To have and hold unending — 
 I'll woo and win this latest love 
 
 Against the world contending. 
 
 No Norman maid has found her way 
 
 Into my heart's abysses; 
 No English girl has made me hers; 
 
 In fact, no foreign misses 
 Could claim the niche that this love owns 
 
 Who makes my life so zestful. 
 And yet I'll say my new love's name 
 
 Is in a way distressful. 
 I only hope my love's returned. 
 
 He's but a simple rookie — 
 A former Harvey chef who's now 
 
 Warsinski, our new "cookie"! 
 
To a Crowd in a Cabaret 
 
 The flash of flesh and shaded lights. 
 
 The crack of corks and glutton's fare; 
 
 The fog of smoke and laughter shrill: 
 Is it for these that we prepare? 
 
 The shift of feet and rhythmic beat 
 Of banjo, drums and saxaphones, 
 
 With swaying forms in serried throng: 
 Is it for these that France atones? 
 
 The preening glance and rounder's stare, 
 The whirl and swirl of song and dance; 
 
 "To jazz and jest!" with brimming glass: 
 Is it for these they die in France? 
 
A Year From Now 
 
 There is a pine tree 
 Standing in the moonlight 
 Where, from my tent, 
 I can see it lift its head 
 Against the sky, 
 Standing guard over men 
 Who, a year from now. 
 May know such beauty 
 Only through the voice 
 Of others. 
 
 Down the Company street 
 
 A Victrola is playing — 
 
 Julia Claussen is singing 
 
 An aria from "Samson and Delilah" 
 
 Yet, a year from now. 
 
 Those listening men 
 
 May hear only 
 
 The wobbling hiss 
 
 Of gas shells. 
 
 In a tent across the way, 
 
 A crowd of rookies 
 
 Are singing 
 
 "Good-bye Broadway — Hello France' 
 
 With great gusto; 
 
 And yet, a year from now. 
 
 Those fresh young voices 
 
 May be mute. 
 
To a Violinist 
 
 {now a ''buck private") 
 
 The throbbing tone of a violin 
 
 With the tingling thrill of the concert hall? 
 Played to a group in a trooper's tent, 
 
 To ears attuned to a bugle call; 
 A melody wrung by his fleeting bow 
 
 With master touch and facile ease, 
 To wing its way through the flapping walls — 
 
 A Kreisler Caprice — ^his "Viennese". 
 
 As his fingers stop on the lilting strings 
 
 To touch a note to glowing life, 
 It seems to be unthinking waste 
 
 To pledge this gift in futile strife — 
 A genius risked against a shell, 
 
 A talent thrown without a thought 
 On scales now bent with human weight — 
 
 Is peace to be so dearly bought? 
 
To our Indulgent Friends 
 
 ''Today I got your letter, 
 
 Saying that a sweater 
 
 Was on its way to me" — 
 
 (This makes the fifth that's flitting 
 
 Our way from angels knitting 
 
 For those to cross the sea) 
 
 ''The wristlets are essential — 
 (And yet a penitential 
 Feeling fills our breast, 
 To think that we have seven, 
 Or maybe it's eleven. 
 Already in our chest) 
 
 "The 'cigs^ are just a blessing" — 
 (Emotions quite distressing 
 Confound us as we think 
 Of "smokes" beyond computing, 
 And all the artful looting 
 We've done with pen and ink) 
 
The things they send to rookies, 
 From sleeping bags to cookies, 
 They come on every mail. 
 A ton of stufif we're stacking. 
 And when it comes to packing 
 We'll have to hold a sale. 
 
 L'ENVOI 
 
 Kind friends, accept our thanks. 
 
 But General Orders say 
 A hundred pounds is all 
 
 That we may take away; 
 So kindly, if you will, 
 
 Abstain from an addition 
 To what we have, until 
 
 We get a Lieufs commission. 
 
The Latest Horror of War 
 
 *'Two hundred delegates to the Middlesex County W. C. T. U, 
 assembled for their annual meeting in the First Baptist Church 
 at Watertown adopted resolutions condemning the practice of 
 sending gifts of tobacco to soldiers and sailors. Dr. Louis Rand 
 of Newton, who presented the resolutions, spoke of the wi' 
 jurious effects of tobacco and urged the women to send books 
 instead/'-^News Item. 
 
 It's mighty nice to know, 
 
 When muck you're wading through, 
 That your health is in the hands 
 
 Of watchful ladies, who 
 Are hep that nicotine 
 
 Is worse than German spleen 
 And are shipping books for you 
 
 To the land of parlez-vous. 
 
 When frozen to the waist 
 
 By a wind that's whistling keen, 
 There's nothing quite so sweet 
 
 As a book by Laura Jean; 
 When shells are whizzing past, 
 
 A Chambers, yes, his last, 
 Or Anna Katherine Green, 
 
 Will brighten up the scene. 
 
When sleeping in the rain 
 
 Although the light is dim, 
 Just read a page or two 
 
 In "They" or maybe "Kim"; 
 And when gassed by nitric shells 
 With every breath a stab, 
 Try some of James' gab. 
 Pick up "The Book of Kells" 
 Or the latest thing by Wells! 
 
 L'ENVOI 
 
 Listen, ladies, there's cussing enough in the army now, but if 
 you want the boys to put some real pep in their profanity, just 
 keep on powwowing about your dream of a smokeless army 
 reading Browning and Shaw. The solacing whiff of a "cig" 
 isn't such a hell of a lot to give to a man expected to kill or be 
 killed; and you never saw a bunch of soldiers try to take 
 your tea away and yet you hit the feathers early, get yoiu- three 
 squares on a china plate and don't have to mount guard or do 
 "kitchen police"; to say nothing of hiking, drilling or going 
 over the top. It is silly to yap about the baneful effects of 
 nicotine upon a pair of lungs that ten seconds after the last 
 "drag" on a cigarette may be blown to blazes. It's too bad to 
 have to talk this way to a lot of ladies who have been raised 
 nice, and who have good ideas on how to nm a Sunday school, 
 but when you think that some day our men over there may be 
 feeding the hungry maw of a machine gun, with their tongues 
 hanging out for a smoke, and not get it, just because a lot of 
 hearth-warmers somewhere in Massachusetts framed up a nutty 
 resolution, you can't blame us for treating you rough, can you? 
 
The White Feather 
 
 When England asked her sons 
 To take up arms again, 
 One brother said good-bye 
 At dawn in the drizzling rain; 
 And his step on the creaking stair 
 Will never echo there 
 
 Again. Before he left 
 
 He sat at his desk and wrote 
 
 To his brother in the States — 
 
 A simple, scrawling note 
 
 To the brother who had spent 
 
 His youth with him — and sent 
 
 It overseas. He wrote: 
 "You know our plighted word 
 To stand as one and fight, 
 No matter what occurred — 
 And now we see the day 
 We sought in boyish play, 
 
 So come." The letter sped 
 Across the seas, and he 
 Went out, as gentry do. 
 In all fidelity 
 
 To wait for the rendezvous — 
 To wait and wonder, too. 
 
He went and played the game, 
 As any Eton lad 
 Is taught to play, and stayed 
 To give the best he had, 
 Feeling that their troth 
 Would surely bind them both; 
 
 And then his answer came 
 From the brother overseas: 
 He regretted — yes — and yet, 
 So understand him please! 
 
 But his brother only knew 
 That he must serve for two. 
 
 Through two campaigns he went, 
 To see his comrades die; 
 And then in the Dardanelles 
 He met the Reaper's eye — 
 And died in the drizzling rain, 
 Crushed and torn with pain. 
 
 To the brother overseas 
 Came a letter from the dead — 
 Clutched in a steely grip. 
 Its corners tinged with red — 
 And when he tore the flap 
 No writing met his sight. 
 But on the floor there fell 
 A single feather — white! 
 
Honorably Discharged 
 
 With the pallor 
 
 Of the hospital 
 
 In their thin cheeks — 
 
 Dull-eyed and insecure 
 
 Of step, they come 
 
 With their discharges. 
 
 Freed from the internment 
 
 Of the hase hospital, 
 
 Foot-loose to go 
 
 Where they will; 
 
 To the huhhuh of the city, 
 
 To office or lathe. 
 
 Or to the even days 
 
 Of life in Vandalia, 
 
 Or Cairo or Belvidere — 
 
 Their journey ended 
 
 Before its beginning. 
 
 With the surgeon's indictment 
 In their hands. 
 They sag against the wall — 
 The salvage of War. 
 
Carpe Diem 
 
 Out from the House of Life into the Night of Chance 
 To walk untrodden ways as toys of Circumstance. 
 
 What does the morrow hold? 
 Who can tell — who shall say 
 When reckoned by a score 
 J We total day by day. 
 
 Through labyrinths unknown we stumble, plunge ahead, 
 And some will pass unhurt while others greet the dead. 
 
 What does the scorer say? 
 Why try to answer yet — 
 We will not be afraid 
 Until the Thing is met. 
 
 We find in us the key to sacrifices new. 
 
 So when we meet with death, it may be simple, too. 
 
 What does the cryptic read? 
 Conjecture as you may- 
 Come link arms with Life; 
 Live gladly for today! 
 
Trains 
 
 Over thousands of miles 
 
 Of shining steel rails, 
 
 Past green and red semaphores 
 
 And unheeding flagmen. 
 
 Trains are running, 
 
 Trains, trains, trains. 
 
 Rattling through tunnels 
 
 And clicking by way stations. 
 
 Curving through hills, past timber. 
 
 Out into the open places. 
 
 Flashing past silos and barns 
 
 And whole villages. 
 
 Until finally they echo 
 
 Against the squat factories 
 
 That line the approach to the cities. 
 
 Trains, trains, trains 
 
 With the fire boxes wide open. 
 
 Giant Moguls and old-time Baldwins 
 
 And oil-burners on the Southern Pacific, 
 
 Fire boxes wide open 
 
 Flaring against the night. 
 
 Like a tremendous watch fire 
 
 Where the sentries cluster at their post. 
 
Trains, trains, trains 
 Serpentine strings of cars 
 Loaded with boys and men — 
 The legion of the ten-year span 
 To whom has been given the task 
 Of seeking the Great Adventure. 
 
 Swaying through the North and South, 
 
 And East and West, 
 
 Freighted with the Willing 
 
 And the Unwilling; 
 
 Packed with the Thinking 
 
 And the Unthinking, 
 
 Pushing on to the Unknown 
 
 Away from the shelter and security 
 
 Of the accustomed into the Great Adventure. 
 
 Trains, trains, trains 
 
 With their coach sides scrawled 
 
 With chalked bravado and, sometimes. 
 
 With their windows black 
 
 With yelling boys. 
 
 In open-mouthed exultation 
 
 That they do not feel. 
 
 Rushing further and further 
 
 From the known into the unseeable. 
 
Trains, trains, trains 
 
 With sky-larking boys in khaki, 
 
 Munching sandwiches and drinking pop; 
 
 Or, tired and without their depot swagger, 
 
 Curled up on the red-plush seats; 
 
 Or asleep, with a stranger, in the Pullmans, 
 
 They rush past our camp. 
 
 Which lies against the railroad, 
 
 With the crossing alarm jangling caution 
 
 And fade into the dust or night, 
 
 Leaving us to conjecture where 
 
 As they have left others to wonder — 
 
 As they must wonder themselves 
 
 When they are done 
 
 With the shouting and hand-shaking 
 
 And kissing and hat-waving and singing. 
 
 Trains, trains, trains 
 
 Clicking on into unforecasted days — 
 
 Away from the shelter and security 
 
 Of the accustomed into the Great Adventure. 
 
On Guard 
 
 A cloudless sky of peaceful stars 
 Above a camp in tranquil rest; 
 The keen wind stirs the pine trees. 
 And the white road stretches on 
 Like a path to the warring world. 
 
 Halt! Who goes there? 
 
 Was it nothing but the wind? 
 There is a shadow^ on the grass 
 iVnd the crunch of brush underfoot. 
 
 Advance, friend, and be recognized! 
 
 Let us see the Future^ s face: 
 See if it is friend or foe; 
 
 Let us tear its mask away — 
 
 // this is Fate, then tell us so! 
 
Mike Dillon, Doughboy 
 
 Mike Dillon was a doughboy 
 
 and wore the issue stuff; 
 He wasn't much to look at — 
 
 in fact, was rather rough; 
 He served his time as rookie — 
 
 at drilling in the sun, 
 And cleared a lot of timber 
 
 and polished up his gun. 
 
 Mike Dillon was a private 
 
 with all the word entails; 
 He cussed and chewed tobacco 
 
 and overlooked his nails. 
 You never saw Mike Dillon 
 
 at dances ultra nice; 
 In fact, inspection found him 
 
 enjoying body lice. 
 
 If Mike had married money 
 
 or had a little drag. 
 He might have got a brevet 
 
 and missed a little "fag"; 
 But as a social figure 
 
 he simply wasn't there — 
 So Mike continued drilling 
 
 and knifing up his fare. 
 
In course of time they shipped 'em 
 
 and shipped 'em over where 
 A man like Mike can sidestep 
 
 the frigid social stare. 
 And do the job of soldier 
 
 without the fancy frills. 
 And keep a steady footing 
 
 in the pace that really kills. 
 
 Now Mike did nothing special; 
 
 he only did his best: 
 He stuck and "went on over" — 
 
 and got it in the chest; 
 Played it fair and squarely 
 
 without a social air. 
 And Mike is now in Heaven 
 
 And at least a Corporal there! 
 
The 108th Engineers Passes 
 
 The staccato of drums. 
 
 Beat upon beat; 
 
 Lines of legs 
 
 That flash apart 
 
 And close again 
 
 To flash apart 
 
 In swinging step ; 
 
 The crisp fanfare 
 
 Of strident bugles 
 
 Above the sharp crash 
 
 Of drums; 
 
 Rifles a-slant. 
 
 With bayonets 
 
 A single flash in the sun. 
 
 A blotch of red 
 
 On an orderly's arm — 
 
 The splash of colors 
 
 Against the dust. 
 
 And legs flashing 
 
 As one 
 
 Down the road 
 
 The dull beat 
 
 Of drums 
 
 And the fading cadence 
 
 Of bugles. 
 
Life as a Gage You Flung 
 
 There in an alien land. 
 
 Quiet you lie. 
 Alien no longer now 
 
 For you and I; 
 Fragrant the thoughts of you, 
 
 Rare was your soul; 
 Life as a gage you flung. 
 
 Facing the goal. 
 
 Life as a gage you flung. 
 
 Flung as a rose; 
 Gave it as gentry do, 
 
 Gladly to those 
 Who gave their glowing youth 
 
 Gladly as you. 
 Live in the heart of me — 
 
 I gave you, too. 
 
With Guidons Flying Red 
 
 Into the clouds of stifling dust 
 With guidons flying red; 
 With tromhone and trumpet 
 Flashing through the mirage, 
 Leading the shadowy silhouette 
 Of troopers riding on 
 Into the swirling dust; 
 With the sea-beat of caissons, 
 A deeper note against 
 The shouts of command 
 And clattering hoof beats, 
 The Battery goes. 
 
 Into the clouds of swirling dust — 
 
 Choking, sight-blearing dust — 
 
 A-top of jolting caissons 
 
 Wliich rumble on relentlessly 
 
 Until the silhouette is blurred 
 
 And gone — gone with the gleam of silver 
 
 And guidons flying red. 
 
Into the clouds of whirling dust 
 
 Goes the Battery on its hike, 
 
 And back through the dust 
 
 It will come — with the grumble 
 
 Of caissons and clatter 
 
 Of hoof beats and shouted commands ; 
 
 With trombone and trumpet 
 
 Gleaming at the column's head. 
 
 But some dull morning, 
 
 Into the mire of Flanders Field 
 
 (Instead of the dust of this mimic march) 
 
 With no guidons flying red 
 
 And no silver gleam at the column's head, 
 
 The Battery will go — 
 
 A shadowy silhouette 
 
 Of troopers riding on. 
 
The Mystery of the Mess Fund 
 
 A cussing crew of "truckles" fetched from 
 
 San Antone 
 Where God Almighty's sunshine burned 'em 
 
 to the bone; 
 A fighting bunch of reg'lars shooting craps 
 
 and Mex, 
 And driving o. d. Packards through mud 
 
 above their necks. 
 
 When messing all together down in San 
 Antone, 
 
 They had a whoppin' mess fund (each com- 
 pany has its own) ; 
 
 Then orders came to leave there; so they 
 cut the crew in twain 
 
 And some drove up to Houston and some 
 went east by train. 
 
But the bunch that hit it eastwards took the 
 
 fund along. 
 While the crew that came to Houston found 
 
 the money gone; 
 So somewhere on Long Island a crew is 
 
 messing right, 
 While somewhere down in Texas a crew is 
 
 nursing spite. 
 
 L'ENVOI 
 
 Now I'm not exactly yellow, 
 
 But I'd still donate my chance 
 
 Of standing within gunshot 
 
 When those "truckies" meet in France. 
 
a 
 
 You Were So White, So Soft" 
 
 I knew your gentle touch 
 
 Through all those many years — 
 Unheeding then, but now 
 
 How memory endears 
 That golden span of time 
 
 And makes me wish anew 
 That, since you could not come, 
 
 I might have stayed with you. 
 
 We said good-bye, and yet 
 
 I went without a thought 
 Of what my going meant. 
 
 Or how you held me taut; 
 And yet the thought of you 
 
 Each night repose defeats — 
 Oh, would I knew again 
 
 The luxury of sheets ! 
 
To F. K. M. 
 
 The earth lies stark in its dreary shroud, 
 As dead as the buds that flowered May. 
 
 The moon is wrapped in a fleeing cloud; 
 O, for the song of your voice ! 
 
 You had love in your voice 
 
 So thrillingly true, 
 That the pipes of Pan 
 
 Were an echo of you! 
 
 My heart grows cold in fright of the blast. 
 Like the cry of a loon in a haunted house 
 
 Is the voice of the wind as it rushes past; 
 O, for the touch of your hand ! 
 
 You had June in your heart 
 
 And beauty so rare. 
 That the roses of God 
 
 Bent low in despair! 
 
 My soul is numbed by the chill of the night; 
 
 A lonely mourner on a lonely hill, 
 I stand and watch a phantom light; 
 
 O, for the warmth of your lips!