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Yanks : $b A.E.F. verse: originally published in "The Stars and Stripes," the official newspaper of the American expeditionary forcesVarious

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Yanks : $b A.E.F. verse: originally published in "The Stars and Stripes," the official newspaper of the American expeditionary forces

Name: Yanks : $b A.E.F. verse: originally published in "The Stars and Stripes," the official newspaper of the American expeditionary forces
Author: Various

Various

American poetry -- 20th century; World War, 1914-1918 -- Poetry

All Greeks grasped steel helmets and trench knives and tanks
       And wheel teams and chariots and fell into ranks.
       Shipping boards gave no trouble with quarrels or slips:
       The beauty of Helen had launched all the ships.

       All cautioned their sweethearts that since they must go,
       To keep home hearths heated, on flirting go slow;
       For each warrior was off to the battle and strife
       To make the world safe for a good-looking wife.

       But they’d never have fought if they’d read Helen’s note,
       Which just before leaving she hastily wrote:
       “Menelaus just entered our once happy home
       With an overseas cap on the top of his dome!”
               FAIRFAX D. DOWNEY, 1st Lt., F.A.




                               HOGGIN’ IT


  Well, I’ve eaten food sublime, and I’ve eaten food that’s rotten,
  From Alaska’s coldest corner to where the landscape’s cotton;
  At times there has been plenty, then there’s times when there’s been
     none,
  And I’ve kept me upper stiffest, for complainin’ I’m not one.
  But it’s now that I’m protestin’—oh, I’ve suffered silence long—
  It’s fancy food I’m cravin’, for me system’s goin’ wrong.

          Oh, it’s bacon, bacon, bacon,
          Till your belly’s fairly achin’
      For some biscuits or some hot cakes that in your mouth would melt;
          There’s no German dog could dare me,
          No fear of death would scare me,
      If I only had some chicken à la King beneath me belt.

  Now I read where Mr. Hoover tells the folks to lay off hoggin’,
  We’ll be needin’ lots of grub to put the Fritz on the toboggan;
  And the way that they’ve responded makes you feel so awful proud
  That you’d like to meet old Bill to take his measure for a shroud.
  Lord, it’s plenty that we’re gettin’, but I’d be dancin’ jigs
  If they’d pass an order home to stop a-killin’ off the pigs.

          For it’s bacon, bacon, bacon,
          Till your very soul is shakin’—
      If I could pick me eatin’, it’s a different song I’d sing;
          I’d not miss a raidin’ party,
          For patrol I’d be quite hearty,
      Oh, I’d swap me chance of Heaven for some chicken à la King.
                                MED. MIQUE.




                                THE MAN


    Here today in the sunshine I saw a soldier go
      Out of Life’s heated battle into the evening glow.
    He was just a common soldier, one of a mighty clan,
      But every watcher bared his head in honor to the Man.
    We stood there at attention, and the flag-draped coffin came,
      And we snapped up to salute him, though we never knew his name.
    He was just a common soldier, but we couldn’t salute as well
      The best old major general on this bright side o’ hell!
                                        H. T. S.




                            SONG OF THE GUNS

Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.

Yanks : $b A.E.F. verse: originally published in "The Stars and Stripes," the official newspaper of the American expeditionary forces

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