The poem
So Davies wrote: ' This leaves me in the pink. ' Then scrawled his name: ' Your loving sweetheart Willie ' With crosses for a hug. He'd had a drink Of rum and tea; and, though the barn was chilly, For once his blood ram warm; he had pay to spend, Winter was passing; soon the year would mend.
He couldn't sleep that night. Stiff in the dark He groaned and thought of Sundays at the farm, When he'd go out as cheerful as a lark In his best suit to wander arm-in-arm With brown-eyed Gwen, and whisper in her ear The simple, silly things she liked to hear.
And then he thought: to-morrow night we trudge Up to the trenches, and my boots are rotten. Five miles of stodgy clay and freezing sludge, And everything but wretchedness forgotten. To-night he's in the pink; but soon he'll die. And still the war goes on; he don't know why.