In Competition No 2555 you were invited to write a poem, short story or news report containing the line ‘They couldn’t hit an elephant from there’.
The line, which I altered slightly to make versification easier, was uttered by General John Sedgwick, a Union general who was shot dead in the American civil war battle of Spotsylvania Court House, Virginia, in 1864. Actually, they were his penultimate words (which, according to an eyewitness, he uttered more than once); but he would not have uttered them at all had he known that the enemy had recently acquired much more sophisticated weaponry, thus improving the strike rate of their sharpshooters. Anyway, the e word prompted some suitably surreal entries; commendations go to Martin Parker, Katie Mallett and George Simmers. The winners, printed below, get £30 each while the bonus fiver goes to Alan Millard.
Oh what a vile villain in the Vale of Elah stood,
A Philistine revered and feared throughout the neighbourhood,
A warrior of gargantuan size, indeed, more great than good
Whose awesome height was quite beyond compare.
One day a lad unclad, a shrimp, stood up to him and said,
‘You’d best not mess with me, my man, I might look underfed
But when it comes to fighting I can strike a giant dead,
So challenge me in battle if you dare!’
The armoured warrior’s weapons gleamed, raised ready now for war,
The lad, he had a leather sling and clearly nothing more,
While all around stood baying for a feast of blood and gore,
With limbs and entrails flying through the air.
The villain faced his feeble foe and started trumpeting:
‘Come on, then, choose some pebbles, lad, and shove them in your sling,
Then whirl and hurl them, let them fly and give the stones a fling!
They couldn’t hit an elephant from there.’
Alan Millard
I keeps below the parapet
(It’s even worse up top)
’Cos the sniper in the other trench
Will always take a pop,
An’ if ’e gets a bead on you,
’E’ll get you, and that’s that!
’E’ll take aim from five ’undred yards
An’ hit a bloomin’ gnat!
It ain’t that safe behind the lines —
There’s targets there as well,
They can hit a cat two miles away
By usin’ a well-aimed shell.
So send me back to Blighty!
If I was in Leicester Square,
I’d like to think they couldn’t hit
An elephant from there.
Brian Murdoch
‘Hit targets!’, so New Labour keeps demanding
(Entrenched in ivory tower and office chair);
The target might be just where they are standing,
But they couldn’t hit an elephant from there.
‘We’re cutting crime!’ they promise (crossing fingers)
‘We’ll make young thugs forgo the violent life!’
Their pledge evaporates and failure lingers,
For they couldn’t cut through butter with a knife.
They’re trying to run the police and schools and hospitals,
Pretending they’re all polymaths by trade;
The more they fail, the more they think they’re oracles,
But they couldn’t run a chapel Boys’ Brigade.
New Labour treats us all like juveniles,
But they’re inefficient with it, which is worse;
We lose our rights, they lose our data files,
And they think that makes us equal — that’s the curse.
Virginia Price Evans
The General would not sanction a retreat
As he marshalled all the troops into a square.
Though the foes we faced were manic he forbade his men to panic
With ‘They couldn’t hit an elephant from there’.
When his aide-de-camp fell lifeless at his feet
He was tempted, but was careful not, to swear
Saying, ‘Don’t think that’s inauspicious, it was purely adventitious.
They couldn’t hit an elephant from there.’
We never knew who sold them modern arms
But the bullets whistled deadly through the air,
With explosions to come after, then the General’s mad laughter:
‘They couldn’t hit an elephant from there.’
A country churchyard always has its charms,
And a certain grave implores me like a prayer
From a village outside Kettering, where its epitaphic lettering
Reads: ‘They couldn’t hit an elephant from there.’
Basil Ransome-Davies
Two hunters, big on brawn but light on brain,
Went seeking out some elephant terrain.
Each had his own binoculars and rifle,
And each was primed to spot a stunning eyeful
Of pachydermal splendour, and dispatch it
With bullet and then later on with hatchet.
With spirits high, they travelled to Bermuda,
Where all they saw was one fat barracuda.
And then ’twas off to Rio de Janeiro;
The elephants they found? Exactly zero.
‘Aha!’ they cried, ‘Let’s try Trafalgar Square!’
They couldn’t hit an elephant from there.
A final stab they took at Biarritz,
And then they just gave up, and called it quits.
In just two weeks they got another licence,
And now they’re after buffalo and bisons.
Mae Scanlan
No. 2558: Harmless drudgery
You are invited to submit entries (asbo, blog, chav, whadeva, innit) to Dr Johnson for inclusion in a 21st-century supplement to his dictionary. Send to ‘Competition 2558’ by 14 August or email jamesy@greenbee.net.
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