Clerk's Elegy Written in a Barrack Back Yard.

The curfew does not knell the parting day,
The wearied Clerks wind slowly down to tea,
The runner puts his well worn bike away
And leaves the village to the L.D.V.

Fast fades the glimmering landscape on the sight
And all the air a solemn stillness holds,
Save where the typist switches on the light
And feebly in his hand a stencil holds.

Save from below you ivey-mantled tower
A mopin sentry doth to the moon complain
Of such as wandering near his blacked-out boxer
Molest his wearied solitary reign.

Beneath these Breckwood Elms, the Yew trees' shade
Where heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap,
Each in his narrow cell forever laid,
The rude forerunners of the CASP sleep.

For them no more the cookhouse food shall burn
Nor fire picquet's shall ply their evening care
Nor Sergeant-Majors peg them every way they turn;
Four days' C.B. - and envied chores to share.

The breezy call of incense breathing morn,
The bugles blasting from the orderly shed,
Not the RSM with soft and kindly voice
No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed.

Pull many a ton of useless paper it seems
The deep unfathomed files of office bear;
Pull many a clerk was born to slave unseen,
And waste his talents in Headquarter's air.

The beast of heraldry - the pomp of power -
And all that private's rank and trades pay ever gave
Await alike the inevitable hour --
The paths are gory and lead but the grave.

Perchance some weary clerk, in straying from the road,
Implores the passing tribute of a shot
From one on guard whose aim too well has laid him low
And here within this sceptered Isle his bones shall rot.

And some years hence when on remembrance day
Upon a wooden cross beneath yon scraggly fern,
This simple epitaph shall shock the passer-by-
"He gave his life to save a Nil return".

-- B 87829 Sgt [?] W Pratt
Written in a moment of intense passion.