They are "clumsily bent with bombs, guns, shovels and battle gear." The men “push,” encountering “bristling fire.” “Rows of grey, murmuring faces, masked by fear” emerge from the trenches. This scene would be familiar to many readers. Thus, the last lines make Sassoon's interpretation of war devastatingly so. He calls Speranza onto the scene, “debating” in the mud. The last words of the poem are "O Jesus, make him stop!" There is no ambiguity about the effect Sassoon intended these words to have on the reader. He is saying that the war is useless now, has dragged on for too long and causes senseless deaths by brutal means. Hope is, quite literally, a non-factor in Sassoon's vision