David Campbell - Men in Green

Oh, there were fifteen men in green, <br />Each with a tommy-gun, <br />Who leapt into my plane at dawn; <br />We rose to meet the sun. <br /> <br />We set our course towards the east <br />And climbed into the day <br />Till the ribbed jungle underneath <br />Like a giant fossil lay. <br /> <br />We climbed towards the distant range, <br />Where two white paws of cloud <br />Clutched at the shoulders of the pass; <br />The green men laughed aloud. <br /> <br />They did not fear the ape-like cloud <br />That climbed the mountain crest <br />And hung from ropes invisible <br />With lightning in its breast. <br /> <br />They did not fear the summer's sun <br />In whose hot centre lie <br />A hundred hissing cannon shells <br />For the unwatchful eye. <br /> <br />And when on Dobadura's field <br />We landed, each man raised <br />His thumb towards the open sky; <br />But to their right I gazed. <br /> <br />For fifteen men in jungle green <br />Rose from the kunai grass <br />And came towards the plane. My men <br />In silence watched them pass; <br />It seemed they looked upon themselves <br />In Times's prophetic glass. <br /> <br />Oh, there were some leaned on a stick <br />And some on stretchers lay, <br />But few walked on their own two feet <br />In the early green of day. <br /> <br />(They did not heed the ape-like cloud <br />That climbed the mountain crest; <br />They did not fear the summer sun <br />With bullets for their breast.) <br /> <br />Their eyes were bright, their looks were dull; <br />Their skin had turned to clay. <br />Nature had meet them in the night <br />And stalked them in the day. <br /> <br />And I think still of men in green <br />On the Soputa track, <br />With fifteen spitting tommy-guns <br />To keep the jungle back.<br /><br />David Campbell<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/men-in-green/