Who Has Won?

(N.B. A school work that supposedly immitates Sassoon)

We've fought this war so long and hard,
First with courage, but then discouraged,
Only to have friends downed by stray shards,
And our minds of pleasantness purged.
One must ask, before all is done,
"On the front, who has won?"

Cratered and scarred is the ground,
Which rumbles with each mortar round,
Catches the blood we too often bleed,
So saline that in it worms won't breed.
The earth which all soldiers embrace,
Takes from war no redeeming grace.

The azure sky that carries our screams,
Blows the dust into our wounds.
With clouds she shrouds the mourning moon,
And her wind wakes us from dreams.
Heaven tortures us throughout the days,
So to her comes no joyful praise.

Of young men our nation is robbed,
For whom the girls and mothers sobbed.
Wheat fields lie silent and untended,
Cracked roads and walls go unmended.
To a land that's lost so much youth,
The Kaiser's promises hold little truth.

Yet while we die, They thrive-
The red-eyed rats we all despise.
Hungrily swarming as if from hornet-hive,
Eagerly they feast off our demise.
Jaws that nibble on wedding-ring,
You are of the battlefield's Kings!