it was raining a little bit all day
kinder drizzly and very damp
airplanes were buzzing overhead
most all the time jes like a lot of hornets
we seed quite a lot of our machinegun
battalion across the road from us
blowed up by the big shells
the woods were all mussed up
and looked as if a terrible cyclone
done swept through them
and all through the long night
those big guns flashed and growled
jes like the lightning and thunder
when it storms in the mountains at home
and oh, my! we had to pass the wounded
and some of them were on stretchers going
back to the dressing stations and some
were lying around moaning and twitching
and oh, my! the dead were all along the road
and their mouths were open and their eyes too
but they couldn’t see nothing no more nohow
i’m atelling you the little log cabin in wolf valley
in old tennessee seemed a long long way off
From Sergeant Alvin C. York’s diary, 7 October 1918.
Verbatim Poetry 