IN THE PINK
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o Davies wrote: "This leaves me in the pink."Then scrawled his name: "Your loving sweetheart, Willie."With crosses for a hug. He'd had a drinkOf rum and tea; and, though the barn was chilly,For once his blood ran warm; he had pay to spend.Winter was passing; soon the year would mend. He couldn't sleep that night. Stiff in the darkHe groaned and thought of Sundays at the farm,When he'd go out as cheerful as a larkIn his best suit to wander arm-in-armWith brown-eyed Gwen, and whisper in her earThe simple, silly things she liked to hear. And then he thought: to-morrow night we trudgeUp to the trenches, and my boots are rotten.Five miles of stodgy clay and freezing sludge,And everything but wretchedness forgotten.To-night he's in the pink; but soon he'll die.And still the war goes on; _he_ don't know why.
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