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Often men came to me and said that they
Had done you in at last and heard you yell,
But ’twas my sorrow on th’ ensuing day
To hear again the voice I knew so well.
And when one night with dark and fell design
We carried out that raid upon your line,
It was with hopes, old enemy of mine,
That we should send you rapidly to hell.

But now that I am far from war’s alarms
I like to muse upon the years to come
When we shall both have done with force and arms,
And Mills and Spaeter[1] will alike be dumb,
And those familiar accents I shall hear,
And we shall meet, oh peerless grenadier—
What shall it be, my Basil? Whisky? Beer?
Or punch concocted out of ration rum?

I think it shall be punch; I also think
That, as we ladle down the potent brew,
Myself and you, my Basil, ought to drink
Health to the barricades at which we threw

  1. Karl Spaeter, a prominent Bosche munitioneer.
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