TALES TOLD TO CIVILIANS. The FLY. HAVE I been at the Front! -- O Lor! Was I over the bags? -- You bet. They tell me I won the mouldy war At the Battle of Nouvillette ; The bombs was terrible thick And the shells was mountain-high, And many a Bosch went back to base, But I can't say much about what took place, For I had a fly in my eye. We were just getting up to Fritz When the horrible thing occurred, And bang in my eye the blighter sits, The size of a well-fed bird ; "Come on," the Officer says ; I says to him, " 'By-and-by;' It's all very well to say, 'Come on!' I would if my arms and legs were gone, But I've got a fly in my eye." Have you been on a bicycle, Sir, And copped it proper the same, When the world was only a misty blur And your eye like a red-hot flame, So that you wept great tears, So that you longed to die? Well, think what it is when there happens to be A battle you specially came to see, And then get a fly in your eye. They say as there ain't no doubt What I ought to have gone and done- Turned my upper lid inside out And over the under one; But I tell you the bombs was thick, And never a man said " Hi!: Just monkey about with your upper lid;" So I blew my nose and I wept, I did, And I still had a fly in my eye. And then, Sir, I just went mad, I groped for my trusty hype, And I laid about like a Tyneside lad With a good blind circular swipe ; They tell me I killed ten Huns And laid out Corporal Fry ; The Huns they took to their heels and fled, And even the Company wished me dead, And I still had a fly in my eye. I fell on my poor old face, I lay in a hole and swore; And now they call me a shell-shock case And tell me I won the War; They gave me the D.C.M., And that's why I seem so shy, But this is the truth I've told to you, And you never can tell what a man won't do With a darned great fly in his eye. A. P. H.