Jake Diefer, the barrel-chested Pennsylvanian, The steer-thewed, fist-plank-splitter from Cumberland, Came through the heat and the dust and the mounting roar That could not drown the rustle of the tall wheat Making its growing sound, its windrustled sound, In his heart that sound, that brief and abiding sound, To a fork and a road he knew. And then he heard That mixed, indocile noise of combat indeed And as if it were strange to him when it was not strange. —He never took much account of the roads they went, They were always going somewhere and roads were roads. But he knew this road. He knew its turns and its hills, And what ploughlands lay beyond it, beyond the town, On the way to Chambersburg. He saw with wild eyes Not the road before him or anything real at all But grey men in an unreal wheatfield, tramping it down, Filling their tattered hats with the ripe, rough grain While a shell burst over a barn. “Grasshoppers!” he said