The Battle Of The Headlines Poem by A. P. Herbert

Hold back, sub-editor! You march and plan
So much more swiftly than the soldiers can.
They take a trench or two, a few-score scalps,
But your white arrows are across the Alps.
Even a tank must sometimes pause for fuel,
But you fly onward, twice as quick and cruel.
I know it's easy to imagine 'traps'
And super-Stalingrads on small-scale maps.
What is a river, or a mountain-crag?
They are not marked. So Fritz is 'in the bag'.
In the Crimea—do the Germans know?—
They 'faced annihilation' long ago.
I can't recall when you announced the kill;
I know they face annihilation still.
If all the Huns had met a horrid end
That you've 'enveloped' in the Dnieper Bend,
Or pronged at Tarnopol or Krivoi Rog,
Or caught with pincers in the Pripet bog,
We might stop talking of the Second Front—
There would not be another Hun to hunt.
Desist, headliner, from your wild advance,
And let the front-line fellow have a chance.
Lay off, brave scribe; for, when he does prevail,
We hardly notice it—the news is stale.
February 9, 1944