POEM FOR JULY 1ST

A poem about the First World War

POEM FOR JULY 1^ST

 

SUMMER DAYS 1916 (when I was just 16)

 

We all left the hazy shores of England in good spirits

I almost cried, tears welling in my eyes, saying my goodbyes

To mum and Mary - and watching the others, reddening eyes

The band played, the bunting waved, would we be saved

To again return to these beloved shores?

 

The horn blared, Tom looked scared, now realising what he’d done,

As the mighty steel hull turned and the ever present gull burned

A picture in my mind I would never forget.

The band played, the bunting waved, would we be saved

To again return to these beloved shores?

 

Quieter got the troops as England’s shores we left

The loved ones on the quayside, hankies waving as a tide of despair

Overcame the occasion, off for the invasion, the youth of a proud nation

Never thinking it would come to this, the last goodbye kiss, before the risk

Of gunshot, capture or even death.

The band now distantly played, we could hardly see the bunting waved

Would we be saved

To again return to these beloved shores?

 

Trenches dug,

mud brown across a foreign field we found,

were we to die here in this ground so far away?

The heavy guns thundered out, a scream from somewhere and then the shout

“get your bloody ‘ead down!” so we sat and shared a f*g, and tried to smile

Pete was sick �" but in a while a quietness descended all around.

We could see the blue, hazy sky, the grass upon the hill far away

But silence was frightening, no birds sang, and then a flash of lightning

Before the exploding shell �" my lungs were tightening

Then ears bursting as the whistle of the sergeant shrill and urgent

Blew and blew and blew.

 

A long searing shout, or was it a scream echoed round the trenches

As men climbed down off benches and scrambled up the trenches

Shouting. Guns before them pointing

And crack, crack, crack �" they all fell down.

Like khaki ants we climbed the slippery sides

I turned to smile at Pete, he fell but smiled, eyes still wide

We ran on, and all around me friends and strangers alike in stride

Stopped and fell onto this field of death

 

And now a faint whistle shrill, I was pulled down by someone ‘Lay still’

He whispered, and then “Back! Back! You men!” My companion pulled me again

By the shoulder epaulet. He crawled around and back towards our trench

Over dead friends, dear friends and in our nostrils the stench

Of death and shock and sorrow of what had just occurred

 

We scrambled head first into the dirt and lay on our backs, numb

And after this hell, nothing hurt any more.

But thoughts were not of England and our family there,

but of Germany

And who these men (surely not unlike ourselves) could be

From German families

Killing our young men,

ratatat, ratatat, they all fell flat, and that was that

They never would hear again a band playing, flags waving,

would never be saved

Never return to any shore, not any more.

 

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