Lines written in a Wareham pub, December 1940

The town is taken by a bloodless war
The siege is raised that was no siege before—
The Army occupies, the cit's are quelled
Without resistance, and the post is held.
Peacefully now a war-time horde invades,
Delights the brazen, tempts the tim'rous maids,
And soon in every bar throughout the town
The scene is filled by Servants of the Crown
Who, by conscription or by conscience driven,
Fight certain Hell in hopes of dubious Heaven.
The four-ale bar is filled with Other Ranks
Freed from the thralldom of their guns and tanks
For some brief hours before the roll is called
And they, poor cattle, rounded up and stalled.
Here's no repining for a world at war,
For peacetime never held such gifts in store—
What, board and lodging, clothes and boots all free,
Daily roast meat, and sugar in your tea?
No more by dreams of unemployment harried,
Your wife supported (legal or unmarried),
With cash each week, don't try too hard to end it!
Swill down the beer, bawl out the drunken song,
There're bombers over, so it mayn't last long.
Live for the minute: since you've never had
To think, you won't start now, and get sent mad.

In the Saloon the sergeants reign supreme—
The Cook's co-equal and the Housemaid's dream.
For here's no segregation of the sexes,
No public-school inhibited complexes!
As at some ritual, wide-eyed and devout,
Their buxom consorts, as they sip their stout,
Hang on each word, with martial valour fraught,
Of officers ticked off, and rookies taught—
And all the puerile boastfulness is swallowed,
As beer by more beer, stout by more stout's followed,
Till sergeants, doxies, oft-repeated story,
All swim alike in one supernal glory,
And each puts out his petty claim to power,
Seizing his all-too evanescent hour.

The Smoke Room Lounge (with prices rather higher)
Has officers crescentic round the fire,
Who, as the coal to warm each arse begins,
Sip double whiskies or absorb pink gins.
And then they talk—we search our memory o'er—
Where have we heard that awful drone before?
Of course—that's it—in common-rooms of schools
Alone one heard that dreary bleat of fools!
How little changed! The Head we used to know,
With crown on shoulder stands a bald C.O.,
The lips form equally the vapid phrase
Of the school's glory, or the Battery's praise.
The subaltern-schoolmasters stand around,
Quick to agree, each hopes to hold his ground—
"Now in my House, I rather feel the tone . . ."
(I've mixed the records on the gramophone!)
"I don't think Smith is quite the man to go:
He's not the type that makes an N.C.O. . . ."
And so their little universe is run,
Revolving round their regimental sun.
For them the part is greater than the whole,
They've got Commissions, but they've lost their soul.
Not theirs to think, for that's all done before,
And set out in King's Regs and Army Law.
So, world within a world, the Army plays,
The townsmen profit, and the country pays.
The world is crazy. Terror holds the reins,
We've all backed losers, missed our several trains.
Unchanged within itself through every rank
Alone the Army stands, itself to thank.
For only such remoteness can we find,
In the unthinking military mind.

December 1940

NOTES

• a separate sheet is in SP's archive with a different title for this poem, viz. The Army takes its ease, of which only the title page remains:
The army takes its ease \ by \ 1478477 \ Gunner Piggott, S. \ To \ Alec Keiller \ who would hate to admit that he approves of the sentiments in the poem \ 1941 (from Wiltshire Heritage Museum, including two drawings, one of which in the archive Inst of Arch, Oxford)
• SP's commission and transfer to Intelligence Corps would only come through later in 1941 (see note under poem Henley 1941)