Robert W. Service
A Belgian Priest-Soldier Speaks:—
GURR! You ‘cochon’! Stand and fight!
Show your mettle! Snarl and bite!
Spawn of an accursed race,
Turn and meet me face to face!
Here amid the wreck and rout
Let us grip and have it out!
Here where ruins rock and reel
Let us settle, steel to steel!
Look! Our houses, how they spit
Sparks from brands your friends have lit.
See! Our gutters running red,
Bright with blood your friends have shed.
Hark! Amid your drunken brawl
How our maidens shriek and call.
Why have YOU come here alone,
To this hearth’s blood-spattered stone?
Come to ravish, come to loot,
Come to play the ghoulish brute.
Ah, indeed! We well are met,
Bayonet to bayonet.
God! I never killed a man:
Now I’ll do the best I can.
Rip you to the evil heart,
Laugh to see the life-blood start.
Bah! You swine! I hate you so.
Show you mercy? No! . . . and no! . . .
There! I’ve done it. See! He lies
Death a-staring from his eyes;
Glazing eyeballs, panting breath,
How it’s horrible, is Death!
Plucking at his bloody lips
With his trembling finger-tips;
Choking in a dreadful way
As if he would something say
In that uncouth tongue of his. . . .
Oh, how horrible Death is!
How I wish that he would die!
So unnerved, unmanned am I.
See! His twitching face is white!
See! His bubbling blood is bright.
Why do I not shout with glee?
What strange spell is over me?
There he lies; the fight was fair;
Let me toss my cap in air.
Why am I so silent? Why
Do I pray for him to die?
Where is all my vengeful joy?
Ugh! MY FOE IS BUT A BOY.
I’d a brother of his age
Perished in the war’s red rage;
Perished in the Ypres hell:
Oh, I loved my brother well.
And though I be hard and grim,
How it makes me think of him!
He had just such flaxen hair
As the lad that’s lying there.
Just such frank blue eyes were his. . . .
God! How horrible war is!
I have reason to be gay:
There is one less foe to slay.
I have reason to be glad:
Yet—my foe is such a lad.
So I watch in dull amaze,
See his dying eyes a-glaze,
See his face grow glorified,
See his hands outstretched and wide
To that bit of ruined wall
Where the flames have ceased to crawl,
Where amid the crumbling bricks
Hangs A BLACKENED CRUCIFIX.
Now, oh now I understand.
Quick I press it in his hand,
Close his feeble finger-tips,
Hold it to his faltering lips.
As I watch his welling blood
I would stem it if I could.
God of Pity, let him live!
God of Love, forgive, forgive.
. . . . .
His face looked strangely, as he died,
Like that of One they crucified.
And in the pocket of his coat
I found a letter; thus he wrote:
‘The things I’ve seen! Oh, mother dear,
I’m wondering can God be here?
To-night amid the drunken brawl
I saw a Cross hung on a wall;
I’ll seek it now, and there alone
Perhaps I may atone, atone. . . .’
Ah no! ‘Tis I who must atone.
No other saw but God alone;
Yet how can I forget the sight
Of that face so woeful white!
Dead I kissed him as he lay,
Knelt by him and tried to pray;
Left him lying there at rest,
Crucifix upon his breast.
Not for him the pity be.
Ye who pity, pity me,
Crawling now the ways I trod,
Blood-guilty in sight of God.
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Analysis (AI Assisted)
This poem pulls no punches. It begins with fury, the raw, unrestrained anger of a man ready to fight for his home and his people. But what starts as righteous vengeance shifts into a deeply personal reckoning with the brutality of war, and it’s this shift that makes the poem so haunting. The Belgian priest-soldier, initially consumed by hatred, ends up confronting his humanity in a way that’s almost unbearable.
The poem’s first half reads like an explosion of rage. The language is harsh, guttural—words like “Gurr!” and “cochon” set the tone of a man who sees his enemy not as human but as an animal. The priest doesn’t just want to defeat his foe; he wants to destroy him, rip him apart, and feel satisfaction in doing so. The imagery is vivid and horrifying: blood in the gutters, flames consuming homes, and the cries of women violated. It’s not just war—it’s the end of everything good and sacred, and his response is total dehumanization of the “foe.”
But the real punch comes after he kills the enemy soldier. The adrenaline fades, and with it, the blind hatred. The priest is left face-to-face with his victim, no longer an abstract enemy but a boy—flaxen-haired, blue-eyed, and painfully young. The revelation is devastating, not just for the character but for the reader too. It’s a reminder that even in war, where killing is sanctioned and sometimes celebrated, humanity can’t be entirely erased. He’s no longer just a soldier; he’s a boy who reminds the priest of his own brother, someone loved and mourned.
The crucifix hanging on the ruined wall is a potent symbol. It cuts through the violence and brings the priest back to his faith, a faith that’s supposed to stand against killing and vengeance. The enemy soldier’s outstretched hands toward the crucifix create a moment of transcendence, as if the boy is reaching for redemption—or maybe offering it to the priest. This act of pressing the crucifix into the dying soldier’s hands is both a gesture of forgiveness and an attempt to make amends, a desperate bid to reclaim his lost sense of morality.
The final stanza flips the pity back onto the narrator. He recognizes his guilt, not just for this one death but for the hate and bloodlust that drove him. The boy becomes a Christ-like figure, dying with forgiveness and grace while the priest-soldier, who should embody compassion, is left burdened with guilt. The man’s self-loathing lingers, long after the act itself, as he crawls through the aftermath of war, unable to absolve himself.
What makes this poem unforgettable is how it peels back the layers of war—how it transforms the black-and-white simplicity of “us versus them” into a deeply personal confrontation with morality, faith, and guilt. It doesn’t glorify violence or martyrdom; it simply shows the cost, both to the victim and the perpetrator. It’s not just the boy who dies here—it’s something inside the priest as well. The poem leaves you with the heavy question: what do you do with the weight of survival, when surviving means you’ve taken a life?