There’s mud in your mess-kit as thick as can be, It sticks to your fingers like leaves to a tree— Sunny France! _Oh, the ruddy mud, the muddy mud, the mud that gets your goat, The sliding mud, the gliding mud, that sprays your pants and coat!_ It cakes in your mouth till you feel like an ox, It slips down your back and it rests in your sox; You think that you’re walking on cut glass and rocks— Sunny France! There’s mud in your gas mask, there’s mud in your hat, There’s mud in your helmet, there’s mud on your gat, Yet though mud’s all around us, we’re happy at that— Sunny France! _Oh, the dank, dank mud, the rank, rank mud, there’s just one guy to blame; We’ll wish him well (we will like hell!) and Kaiser Bill’s his name!_ JACK WARREN CARROL, Corp., F.A. THE TRUANT The wise years saw him go from them, Untaught by them, yet wise; He had but romped with the hoyden years, Unwitting how time flies; Whose laughter glooms to wistfulness At swift, undreamt good-byes. The wise, grave, patient mistresses Of his young manhood’s school, The wise, grave, patient years-to-be— He never knew their rule; And yet he marches by a man, A hero, and no fool! The wise years see him go from them, Untaught by them, yet wise; The lad who played where, yesterday, Girls’ kisses were the prize! They wonder whence his manhood came, So well he lives—and dies! R. R. KIRK, Pvt., G2, S.O.S. TRIBUTE There’s tumultuous confusion a-comin’ down the road, An’ the camouflage don’t nearways hide the dust, An’ it ain’t no flock of camions, though some’s carryin’ a load (I guess the provos winked—or got it fust). But now it’s comin’ closer, you can tell ’em by the roar— It’s the Hundred Second Infantry a-goin’ in once more. Oh, they’ve met the Hun at the length of a gun, And they know what he is and they mind what he’s done, So that’s why they sing as they slog to more fun! You doughboys, you slow boys, Here’s luck, an’ let her go, boys— We like you, Infantry. Now us in the Artillery don’t live no life of ease Nor yet particular security, For the present that Fritz sends us one can’t dodge behind the trees, Unless trees was much thicker than they be. But we know our lot is doughnuts, Orders Home, and Gay Paree To what you march to singin’, Hundred Second Infantry.