from At the Somme: The Song of the Mud<\/b><\/p>\n
This is the song of the mud,<\/p>\n
The pale yellow glistening mud that covers the hills like satin;<\/p>\n
The grey gleaming silvery mud that is spread like enamel over the valleys;<\/p>\n
The frothing, squirting, spurting, liquid mud that gurgles along the road beds;<\/p>\n
The thick elastic mud that is kneaded and pounded and squeezed under the hoofs of the horses;<\/p>\n
The invincible, inexhaustible mud of the war zone.<\/p>\n
This is the song of the mud, the uniform of the poilu.<\/p>\n
His coat is of mud, his great dragging flapping coat, that is too big for him and too heavy;<\/p>\n
His coat that once was blue and now is grey and stiff with the mud that cakes to it.<\/p>\n
This is the mud that clothes him. His trousers and boots are of mud,<\/p>\n
And his skin is of mud;<\/p>\n
And there is mud in his beard.<\/p>\n
His head is crowned with a helmet of mud.<\/p>\n
He wears it well.<\/p>\n
He wears it as a king wears the ermine that bores him.<\/p>\n
He has set a new style in clothing;<\/p>\n
He has introduced the chic of mud.<\/p>\n
This is the song of the mud that wriggles its way into battle.<\/p>\n
The impertinent, the intrusive, the ubiquitous, the unwelcome,<\/p>\n
The slimy inveterate nuisance,<\/p>\n
That fills the trenches,<\/p>\n
That mixes in with the food of the soldiers,<\/p>\n
That spoils the working of motors and crawls into their secret parts,<\/p>\n
That spreads itself over the guns,<\/p>\n
That sucks the guns down and holds them fast in its slimy voluminous lips,<\/p>\n
That has no respect for destruction and muzzles the bursting shells;<\/p>\n
And slowly, softly, easily,<\/p>\n
Soaks up the fire, the noise; soaks up the energy and the courage;<\/p>\n
Soaks up the power of armies;<\/p>\n
Soaks up the battle.<\/p>\n
Just soaks it up and thus stops it.<\/p>\n
This is the hymn of mud-the obscene, the filthy, the putrid,<\/p>\n
The vast liquid grave of our armies. It has drowned our men.<\/p>\n
Its monstrous distended belly reeks with the undigested dead.<\/p>\n
Our men have gone into it, sinking slowly, and struggling and slowly disappearing.<\/p>\n
Our fine men, our brave, strong, young men;<\/p>\n
Our glowing red, shouting, brawny men.<\/p>\n
Slowly, inch by inch, they have gone down into it,<\/p>\n
Into its darkness, its thickness, its silence.<\/p>\n
Slowly, irresistibly, it drew them down, sucked them down,<\/p>\n
And they were drowned in thick, bitter, heaving mud.<\/p>\n
Now it hides them, Oh, so many of them!<\/p>\n
Under its smooth glistening surface it is hiding them blandly.<\/p>\n
There is not a trace of them.<\/p>\n
There is no mark where they went down.<\/p>\n
The mute enormous mouth of the mud has closed over them.<\/p>\n
This is the song of the mud,<\/p>\n
The beautiful glistening golden mud that covers the hills like satin;<\/p>\n
The mysterious gleaming silvery mud that is spread like enamel over the valleys.<\/p>\n
Mud, the disguise of the war zone;<\/p>\n
Mud, the mantle of battles;<\/p>\n
Mud, the smooth fluid grave of our soldiers:<\/p>\n
This is the song of the mud.<\/p>\n
Mary Borden<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
from At the Somme: The Song of the Mud This is the song of the mud, The pale yellow glistening mud that covers the hills like satin; The grey gleaming silvery mud that is spread like enamel over the valleys; The frothing, squirting, spurting, liquid mud that gurgles along the road beds; The thick elastic mud that is kneaded and pounded and squeezed under […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-916","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chirurgean.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/916","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chirurgean.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chirurgean.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chirurgean.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chirurgean.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=916"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/chirurgean.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/916\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":919,"href":"https:\/\/chirurgean.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/916\/revisions\/919"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chirurgean.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=916"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chirurgean.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=916"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chirurgean.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=916"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}