The Cricketers of Flanders


THE FIRST to climb the parapet   
With “cricket balls” in either hand;   
The first to vanish in the smoke   
Of God-forsaken No Man’s Land;   
First at the wire and soonest through,            
First at those red-mouthed hounds of hell,   
The Maxims, and the first to fall,—   
They do their bit and do it well.   

Full sixty yards I’ve seen them throw   
With all that nicety of aim            
They learned on British cricket-fields,   
Ah, bombing is a Briton’s game!   
Shell-hole to shell-hole, trench to trench,   
“Lobbing them over” with an eye   
As true as though it were a game            
And friends were having tea close by.   

Pull down some art-offending thing   
Of carven stone, and in its stead   
Let splendid bronze commemorate   
These men, the living and the dead.            
No figure of heroic size,   
Towering skyward like a god;   
But just a lad who might have stepped   
From any British bombing squad.   

His shrapnel helmet set atilt,            
His bombing waistcoat sagging low,   
His rifle slung across his back:   
Poised in the very act to throw.   
And let some graven legend tell   
Of those weird battles in the West            
Wherein he put old skill to use,   
And played old games with sterner zest.   

Thus should he stand, reminding those   
In less-believing days, perchance,   
How Britain’s fighting cricketers            
Helped bomb the Germans out of France.   
And other eyes than ours would see;   
And other hearts than ours would thrill;   
And others say, as we have said:   
“A sportsman and a soldier still!”


James Norman Hall