{ title: 'The Rio Grande rattler. ([McAllen], Hidalgo County, Tex.) 1916-1917, January 19, 1918, Page 4, Image 4', download_links: [ { link: 'http://www.loc.gov/rss/ndnp/ndnp.xml', label: 'application/rss+xml', meta: 'News about NYS Historic Newspapers - RSS Feed', }, { link: '/lccn/sn87030234/1918-01-19/ed-1/seq-4/png/', label: 'image/png', meta: '', }, { link: '/lccn/sn87030234/1918-01-19/ed-1/seq-4.pdf', label: 'application/pdf', meta: '', }, { link: '/lccn/sn87030234/1918-01-19/ed-1/seq-4/ocr.xml', label: 'application/xml', meta: '', }, { link: '/lccn/sn87030234/1918-01-19/ed-1/seq-4/ocr.txt', label: 'text/plain', meta: '', }, ] }
Image provided by: New York State Military History Museum
THE WADSWORTH GAS ATTACK ant > RIO GRANDE RATTLER The Impatient Soldier By Charles Divine, Ambulance Co 108 “ A soldier has been defined as a man who la s an insatiable desire to go anywhere else.J ?—Maj.-Gen. O’Ryan. Something calls—and I want to go over. I want to go over where comrades have led: From these white cotton fields and the sweet-smelling clover To roads where the flowers of battle are red. Here, friendly highways companion your noontide, Sunshine a-spatter on still, forest lanes, Fields hushed in beauty when night floods the noontide-—• And ponchos and shelter whenever it rains. There, roads are shattered and young lads around them, Bullets will spatter instead of the sun, And up from the byways limp those who have found them, And back from the highways the ghosts of men run. Yet I want to go over-—a soldier’s impatient; This horrible vice is a heart leaping hot, Regardless of fate or the shell-hole adjacent, And trying to get there until he is “ got.” His nature would baffle courtmartial or jury; A-roving, a-yearning, go somewhere he must. God fashioned him out of a glorious fury, A handful of dust . . ’ . and the wanderlust. Something calls—yes, I smell every cluster of clover, I see here the meadows, each blossom is gay . . And the song of the wind—but I want to go over. It calls, and I want to go over to-day!