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soldier Songs
We were out beyond the border a thousand miles or more,
A wilderness of drifting snows behind us and before;
Just a bunch of U. S. doughboys, hollow-eyed from march and
fight, For you bet we all kept busy with Sitting Bull in sight, And our old buzz-saw he'd captured never let us sleep too late When he used it as a war-drum around Christmas, '68!
I remember well that morning, it was twenty-four below, With a bright sun striking crystals from the endless fields of
snow. We had finished with our breakfast of beans and bacon-fat, When someone cried, "Look yonder, along the bluffs! What's
that?" We looked, then cheered like demons. The mail-guard, sure as
fate! A welcome sight, I tell you, on Christmas, '68!
They ploughed in through the snow-drifts across the barrack-yard,
Their fur caps rimmed with hoar-frost, their horses breathing hard.
They bore orders from headquarters, but we soldiers bade them hail
Because they'd brought us, also, our sacks of Christmas mail.
We had never hoped till springtime to have that precious freight;
Was it strange it raised our spirits on Christmas, '68?
We crowded in a corner around old Sergeant "Jack "— A Santa Claus in chevrons with a mail-bag for his pack — And with horse-play, yells, and laughter we greeted every flight As he called the names and fired them their bundles left and right. For some there came no tokens, but they kept their faces straight And smiled at others' fortune on Christmas, '68.
"Tom Flint!" A woollen muffler from his sister back in Maine. "James Bruce!" His father'd sent him a silver watch and chain. "Hans Goetz!" A flute and song-book from the far-off Baltic's shore. |
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