Need help with a few literary quotes

[EvgenyS]

I’m finishing the translation of G.S. Atkinson’s “Soldier’s Diary” and need help with identidying a few quotes. I identified most of the literary quotes in the book, but not all of them. Probably someone can help.

 

“Several fellows posted to companies to-day, so that it looks as if we shall soon be over the wall that Haig spoke about and with our backs to it again” [Could someone help with a quote of Haig mentioning ‘the wall’?]

 

Oh! ye women of England, could you but see your heroes now— " Singing songs of blasphemy, At whist with naked whores ! "

[I can’t find from where this quote is, or is it an allusion to something in the Bible, or?]

 

My body crawls with lice, my rags are saturated with blood, and we all "stink like the essence of putrefaction rotting for the third time" 

[I could not find the source of this quote/allusion]

 

For of these how many know, Or, how many knowing, care

Of the things that bought them this In the mud fields over there.

[I could not find this poem]

 

" the soft, lasceevious stars leer from the velvet skies."

[same]

 

 

[Dai Bach y Sowldiwr]

"With our backs to the wall and believing in the justice of our cause each one of us must fight on to the end."

 - Sir Douglas Haig. Special Order of the Day, 11 April 1918. Issued and addressed to all ranks of the British Army in France and Flanders

Edited 15 September by Dai Bach y Sowldiwr

[EvgenyS]

Ralph Scott is the pen name of G.S. Atkinson.

[knittinganddeath]

If you search for "lascivious stars" on the British Newspaper Archive, you will get a hit from a review of the book that contain that line. It was published in November 1896. Unfortunately the free extract does not mention the author's name.

 

 

[EvgenyS]

Thank you, I will have at least something to include in the footnote.

[Moonraker]

I may be missing something here, but Googling the quotes produced these:

"Oh ye women ..."

"My body crawls with lice ..." (different link to the same book)

"lasceevious stars ..."  Clue: "McAndrew’s Scots version"??  Actually a Kipling poem. (Googling also led me to this 1909 publication, though I can't see the precise reference.)

Edited 19 September by Moonraker

[EvgenyS]

You certainly do with the first two lines - the links you provided are from the book that I asked about. The author quoted these in the book and I was looking for the source, while you search landed on the book itself where the quote was used, not on a yet unknown source.

[Moonraker]

Sorry! I was confused that you refer to the author as G S Atkinson, whereas the webpages to which I linked gave him as Ralph Scott, which I now discover is a pseudonym!

[EvgenyS]

Thank you for the third reference! I tried a different spelling for that word too, but did not come across that verse by Kipling. The author quotes him a few times in the diary, so this is quite logical that it's him again here.