One of my favorites I thought i would share. The author was a British infantry officer in WWI. This is for all those heroes of no renown. I know a few. Lest we forget.

How Rifleman Brown came to Valhalla by Gilbert Frankau

To the lower Hall of Valhalla, to the heroes of no renown,
Relieved from his spell at the listening-post, came Rifleman Joseph Brown.
With never a rent in his khaki nor smear of blood on his face,
He flung his pack from his shoulders, and made for an empty place.

The Killer-men of Valhalla looked up from the banquet-board
At the unfouled breech of his rifle, at the unfleshed point of his sword;
And the unsung dead of the trenches, the kings who have never a crown,
Demanded his pass to Valhalla from Rifleman Joseph Brown.

"Who comes, unhit, to the party?" A one-legged Corporal spoke,
And the gashed heads nodded approval through the rings of the Endless Smoke:
"Who comes for the beer and the Woodbines of the never-closed Canteen,
With the barrack-shine on his bayonet and a full-charged magazine?"

Then Rifleman Brown looked round him at the nameless men of the Line -
At the wounds of the shell and the bullet, at the burns of the bomb and mine;
At the tunics, virgin of medals but crimson-clotted with blood,
At the ankle boots and the puttees, caked stiff with the Flanders mud;
At the myriad short Lee-Enfields that crowded the rifle-rack,
Each with its blade to the sword-boss brown, and its muzzle powder-black:

And Rifleman Brown said never a word; yet he felt in the soul of his soul
His right to the beer of the lower Hall, though he came to drink of it, whole;
His right to the fags of the free Canteen, to a seat at the banquet-board,
Though he came to the men who had killed their man, with never a man to his sword.

"Who speaks for the stranger Rifleman, O boys of the free Canteen?
Who passes the chap with the unmaimed limbs and the kit that is far too clean?"
The gashed heads eyed him above their beers, the gashed lips sucked at their smoke:
There were three at the board of his own platoon, but not a man of them spoke.

His mouth was made for the tankard froth and the biting whiff of a fag,
But he knew that he might not speak for himself to the dead men who do not brag.
A gun-butt crashed on the gateway, a man came staggering in;
His head was cleft with a great red wound from the temple-bone to the chin,
His blade was dyed to the bayonet-boss with the clots that were scarcely dry;
And he cried to the men who had killed their man:
"Who passes the Rifleman?  I!
By the four I slew, by the shell I stopped, if my feet be not too late,
I speak the word for Rifleman Brown that a chap may speak for his mate."

The dead of lower Valhalla, the heroes of dumb renown,
They pricked their ears to a tale of the earth as they set their tankards down.

"My mate was on sentry this evening when the General happened along
And asked what he'd do in a gas-attack,.  Joe told him:
'Beat the gong.'
'What else?'
'Open fire, Sir,' Joe answered.
'Good God, man,' our General said,
'By the time you'd beaten that bloodstained gong the chances are you'd be dead.
Just think, lad.' 'Gas helmet, of course, Sir.' 'Yes, damn it, and gas helmet first.'
So Joe stood dumb to attention, and wondered why he'd been cursed."

The gashed heads turned to the Rifleman, and now it seemed that they knew
Why the face that had never a smear of blood was stained to the jawbones, blue.
"He was posted again at midnight."  The scarred heads craned to the voice,
As the man with the blood-red bayonet spoke up for the mate of his choice.
"You know what it's like in a listening-post, the Very candles aflare,
Their bullets smacking the sand-bags, our Vickers combing your hair,
How your ears and your eyes get jumpy, till each known tuft that you scan
Moves and crawls in the shadows till you'd almost swear it was man;
You know how you peer and snuff at the night when the North-East gas-winds blow."
"By the One who made us and maimed us" quoth lower Valhalla "we know!"

"Sudden, out of the blackness, sudden as Hell, there came
Roar and rattle of rifles, spurts of machine-gun flame;
And Joe stood up in the forward sap to try and get on to the game.
Sudden, their shells come screaming; sudden, his nostrils sniff
The sickening reek of the rotten pears, the death that kills with a whiff.
Death! and he knows it certain, as he bangs on his cartridge-case,
With the gas-cloud's claws at his windpipe and the gas cloud's wings on his face . . .
We heard his gong in our dug-out, he only whacked on it twice,
We whipped our gas-bags over our heads, and manned the step in a trice -
For the cloud would have caught us as sure as Fate if he'd taken the Staff's advice."

His head was cleft with a great red wound from the chin to the temple-bone,
But his voice was clear as a sounding gong, "I'll be damned if I'll drink alone,
Not even in lower Valhalla!  Is he free of your free Canteen,
My mate who comes with the unfleshed point and the full-charged magazine?"

The gashed heads rose at the Rifleman o'er the rings of the Endless Smoke,
And loud as the roar of a thousand guns Valhalla's answer broke,
And loud as the crash of a thousand shells their tankards clashed on the board:
"He is free of the mess of the Killer-men, your mate of the unfleshed sword;
For we know the worth of his deed on earth; as we know the speed of the death
Which catches its man by the back of the throat and gives him water for breath;
As we know how the hand at the helmet-cloth may tarry seconds too long,
When the very life of the front-line trench is staked on the beat of a gong.
By the four you slew, by the case he smote, by the gray gas-cloud and the green,
We pass your mate for the Endless Smoke and the beer of the free Canteen."

In the lower hall of Valhalla, with the heroes of no renown,
With out nameless dead of the Marne and the Aisne, of Mons, and of Wipers town,
With the men who killed ere they died for us, sits Rifleman Joseph Brown.

much appreciated

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Thanks for sharing.  Here's to Rifleman Brown!

Absolutely awesome!  Thank you!

Very well done.

Thank you OP

Hadn't seen that one before.



Thank you for sharing it.

Needs another bump.

To the top.
Thank you for sharing OP It was a good read.

Very cool!

Here's to you Rifleman Brown.

Fucking beutiful.

Great poem.  Not to take anything away from the prose but weren't  mustard gas victims pretty scarred up?

A lot of WWI gases  wouldn't disfigure, but asphyxiated instead. Chlorine, phosgene, etc. Blistering agents didn't show up until later in the war. That's the point of the poem mentioning that the dead of Valhalla didn't recognize what the 1st Rifleman died of (presumably an asphyxiant, since he was blue tinged).

"The sickening reek of the rotten pears, the death that kills with a whiff."

Rotten pear smell probably refers to Ethyldichloroarsine a WWI era blistering agent.

Thank you

Thanks for that..... Great Poem!

Right click, save as.........

some day I hope to recite this to worthy mates.

Haven't seen that before, thanks for posting.