John Allan Wyeth
“Where’s the First Battalion? We haven’t got any more
idea than you have ~~ they might be anywhere.
There’s no front line. You’ll just get caught in a raid.”
Cool darkness after the foggy slobbering mask.
The long sky slashed with trundling swift uproar,
rumbling and husky in the whistling air,
and gas shells hustling into the valley made
a wobbling whisper like a hurtling flask.
We turned along the ridge to the river’s shore.
“By God what’s the matter with all those men?”
“Hey there~~
excuse me, sir ~~ you going by any chance
to the dressing station? I got twenty men ~~ I’m afraid
they’re gassed pretty bad ~”
“What were you going to ask?”
“For God sake tell ’em to hurry up the ambulance.”
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Analysis (AI Assisted)
This poem plunges you right into the disorienting, chaotic environment of war. The first line sets the tone: there’s no clear answer to where the First Battalion is, because in the madness of battle, nothing seems fixed or sure. The soldiers are as lost as anyone else, caught in a confusion where the concept of a “front line” is meaningless. They’re thrown into a kind of war-fog, not just physical but mental too, with no clear direction or purpose beyond survival.
The imagery is visceral—”foggy slobbering mask” is a perfect description of the heavy, choking presence of gas that hangs over everything. It feels as if the soldiers are drowning in a world that’s more about noise and fear than actual combat. The sound of war is another central feature in this poem. The “rumbling and husky” noise of battle is not grand or heroic; it’s raw and relentless. It’s a physical, almost animalistic roar that fills the air, much like the gas shells that come “hustling into the valley,” a small detail that makes the attack feel even more personal and close.
The tension builds further with the soldiers’ interaction—a request for help for men who’ve been gassed. There’s a chilling sense of desperation here, as if the speaker’s mind is starting to short-circuit under the weight of the confusion. The phrasing of “What were you going to ask?” adds to this sense of dislocation; the question seems to be floating, lost amidst the madness.
The request for the ambulance is both heartbreaking and raw. The speaker isn’t asking for some distant or abstract help—he’s calling for an ambulance to save lives, but even in that call for help, there’s a grim realism. The army isn’t geared to move quickly or efficiently enough to deal with something as immediate as a gas attack, and the chilling urgency in the words “hurry up the ambulance” reinforces the helplessness soldiers often feel, trapped in a situation where bureaucracy and the sheer scale of the conflict make human suffering a mere afterthought.
This poem captures the essence of wartime panic, not in grand gestures but in the broken fragments of conversation, the suffocating gas, and the futile desire to get help before it’s too late. It’s a snapshot of a moment, one that never seems to settle, where even the simplest task—getting an ambulance—is complicated by the overwhelming sense of being trapped.