We'd found an old Bosch Dago, and he knew, and gave us hell, for shell on frantic shell, hammered on top, but never quite burst through.

Rain, guttering down in waterfalls of slime, kept slush waist-high, that rising hour by hour choked up the steps,

too thick with clay to climb. What murk of air remained stank old and sour, with fumes of whiz-bangs

and the smell of men who'd lived their years and left their curse in the den,

if not their corpses.

There we heard it from the blast of whiz-bangs, but one found our door at last,

buffeting eyes and breath, snuffing the candles, and thud, flump, thud. Down the steep steps came

thumping and splashing in the flood, deluging muck, the sentry's body, then his rifle,

handles of old Bosch bombs and mud in rock on rock. We dredged him up for killed until he whined.

Oh, sir, my eyes, I'm blind, I'm blind, I'm blind.

Coaxing, I held a flame against his lids and said if he could see the least blurred light, he was not blind.

In time, they'd get all right.

I can't, he sobbed.

Eyeballs. Huge bulged like squids. Watch my dream still.

But I forgot him there in posting next for duty and sending a scout to pick a stretcher somewhere and floundering

about to other posts under the shrieking air.

Those other wretches how they bled and spewed, and one who would have drowned himself

for good, I try not to remember these things now. Let dread hark back for one word only.

How? Half listening to that sentry's moans and jumps and the wild chattering of his broken teeth,

renewed most horribly whenever crumps, pummeled the roof and slog the air beneath.

Through the dense din, I say, we heard him shout, I see your lights, but ours had long gone out.

The Century by Lieutenant Wilfred Owen, 5th Battalion, the Manchester Regiment,

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