A single star-light held in space
Has filled the trench with radiance white,
A cautious soldier hides his face,
Somebody 's calling, so good-night.
He took a shrapnel wound in his left arm as buoyantly as he took every other trouble that came his way, and remained on duty. Nominally a driver, for the last eighteen months of his service he was on the signalling staff. On Easter Sunday 1917 he was one of three signallers who volunteered to accompany an infantry battalion in the advance towards Lens, and at six in the morning went over the top with them in a blinding snowstorm. At Easter in the year before the war he had returned home from Birmingham, and described his delight in that home-coming very simply and vividly in 'Easter—Home Again':
The wheels of the train sing a full-toned song
As they rattle the hours of waiting along,
And soon I am swinging across the street
To the rhythm of joy which my pulses beat,
To arrive at the gate, which creaks as of old;
Its bars of iron seem like pillars of gold
Flashing behind as I leap to the top
