The Trenches

I don't have any comment for this...I really don't.

It's been months since we've left the trenches,
Sitting in shambles and tatters on makeshift benches,
The sun should be up
By now beyond a doubt
But some damned idiot's gone and blocked him out.

The bullets, the bombs, the gas and the noise!
We're the most willing of victims, the smallest of toys,
And all day and all night
We wear stamped numbered tags,
So they know who we are when we go home in bags.

I remember the poor Corporal like it was yesterday,
One shout, and the medics laid him down on some hay,
But I knew they were done
Trying to make him feel better,
When I saw the seargent writing mother a letter.

We all dream of barbed wire when we reach out,
And wake up and wonder what we were crying about,
Then like a weak telegraph
It comes in dots and dashes,
Screaming and shouting in a rain of grey ashes.

Tighten the belts and shore up the last defences,
Wonder if we're worth less than operating expenses?
'Cause they've buried the boys
In their old barracks room,
Dust falling from the timbers by the lamp's gloom.

Maybe the maps have forgotten where we were today,
Now that the enemy trenches are a stone's throw away,
And all the while
In this waiting for the end
I'm really quite happy that I've got a firearm friend.