{"id":733,"date":"2010-11-13T21:10:47","date_gmt":"2010-11-13T21:10:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/poemeveryday\/?p=733"},"modified":"2010-11-13T21:10:47","modified_gmt":"2010-11-13T21:10:47","slug":"counter-attack-by-siegfried-sassoon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/poemeveryday\/counter-attack-by-siegfried-sassoon\/","title":{"rendered":"COUNTER-ATTACK by Siegfried Sassoon"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>
\nCOUNTER-ATTACK
\nby Siegfried Sassoon<\/p>\n

?
\nWe’d gained our first objective hours before
\nWhile dawn broke like a face with blinking eyes,
\nPallid, unshaved and thirsty, blind with smoke.
\nThings seemed all right at first. We held their line,
\nWith bombers posted, Lewis guns well placed,
\nAnd clink of shovels deepening the shallow trench.
\nThe place was rotten with dead; green clumsy legs
\nHigh-booted, sprawled and grovelled along the saps;
\nAnd trunks, face downward, in the sucking mud,
\nWallowed like trodden sand-bags loosely filled;
\nAnd naked sodden buttocks, mats of hair,
\nBulged, clotted heads slept in the plastering slime.
\nAnd then the rain began,?the jolly old rain!
\n?<\/p>\n

A yawning soldier knelt against the bank,
\nStaring across the morning blear with fog;
\nHe wondered when the Allemands would get busy;
\nAnd then, of course, they started with five-nines
\nTraversing, sure as fate, and never a dud.
\nMute in the clamour of shells he watched them burst
\nSpouting dark earth and wire with gusts from hell,
\nWhile posturing giants dissolved in drifts of smoke.
\nHe crouched and flinched, dizzy with galloping fear,
\nSick for escape,?loathing the strangled horror
\nAnd butchered, frantic gestures of the dead.
\n?<\/p>\n

An officer came blundering down the trench:
\n“Stand-to and man the fire-step!” On he went ?
\nGasping and bawling, “Fire-step ? counter-attack!”
\nThen the haze lifted. Bombing on the right
\nDown the old sap: machine-guns on the left;
\nAnd stumbling figures looming out in front.
\n“O Christ, they’re coming at us!” Bullets spat,
\nAnd he remembered his rifle ? rapid fire ?
\n?<\/p>\n

And started blazing wildly ? then a bang
\nCrumpled and spun him sideways, knocked him out
\nTo grunt and wriggle: none heeded him; he choked
\nAnd fought the flapping veils of smothering gloom,
\nLost in a blurred confusion of yells and groans ?
\nDown, and down, and down, he sank and drowned,
\nBleeding to death. The counter-attack had failed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

COUNTER-ATTACK by Siegfried Sassoon ? We’d gained our first objective hours before While dawn broke like a face with blinking eyes, Pallid, unshaved and thirsty, blind with smoke. Things seemed all right at first. We held their line, With bombers posted, Lewis guns well placed, And clink of shovels deepening the shallow trench. The place…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[84,27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-733","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-1900s","category-sassoon"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/poemeveryday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/733","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/poemeveryday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/poemeveryday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/poemeveryday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/poemeveryday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=733"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/poemeveryday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/733\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/poemeveryday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=733"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/poemeveryday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=733"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/poemeveryday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=733"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}