Kitcheners Poster, the Great War

February came in keeping with its ancient character a month of coldness, wetness and of thawing,
With departing frost and melting snow, February could possibly be called the wet season,
Maybe it's a time for floods and damp we are inclined to regard old severe winters gone,
It is the month of anticipation, it is the month of the snowdrop and sap stirs in trees.

A young boy reads the newspapers over and over, marvels at the men in front line France,
Dreaming a thousand dreams he is a hero, a fearless warrior, of the front line trenches,
He longs to stand up on the killing grounds waving the British flag leading an invasion,
As he wakes he is still a boy too young to sail across the seas, to be a real life hero. 

The boy ran off to join the army because of Kitchener's poster on a railway station wall,
A finger pointed from the poster 'We want you. We want you', that did it so he joined up,
He signed with a false name, lied about his age he was fourteen and said he was nineteen,
By the time he was fifteen he lived in trenches, his task was to register the dead and dying,

As he marched on towards the front lines he felt good he felt proud, he was now a soldier,
Rifle on his shoulder, grenades on his belt, bullets round his waist, he is a man of war,
Glancing to his left to his right his friends marched with him each step marched in time,
Proud to fight for king and country he stood tall, his face set hard his uniform perfect.

He was just a boy he should be home, enjoying his precious youth and chasing pretty girls,
Enjoying life, its strength hopes, working on his fathers farm the earth fresh and mellow,
Flowers bursting in English gardens beautiful daffodils, hyacinths, squills and saxifrages,
Almond trees blossomed, pear trees dropped petals, falling like snow, on a spring morning.

The boy was befriended looked after by comrades some had sons back home older than he was,
He would sit with them at night, safe as these were real soldiers, they had fought before,
Always tired always scared, he wondered why he had signed up, this isn't what he thought,
Fifteen years, a veteran in the trenches, an expert at siege fighting, an expert on death. 

Siege fighting, trench warfare, he was always at the front, ground lost, won and then lost,
After each battle he sat in filthy holes and trenches, as men died from sickness or wounds,
Survival in the muddy wet filth, full of hazards, shells, snipers and running from grenades,
The young man who saw the poster, now old and wizened, even though he did not need to shave.

A sunny frosty morning, a sound of bugles ripped through the silence, the trenches buzzed,
The dread of another day began early the massing army sluggish, but ready, faced the front,
A roar of darkened enemies, their backs to the sun, screamed and jumped into our trenches,
The noise of the rifles quietened, as their bayonets stabbed and turned, the boy fell down.

His body was trodden into the mud and gore, only the top his baggy trousers could be seen,
Friends pulled him out of the mire by his belt, a belt with hand made holes to fit a child,
A child so brave died that day, and hardened men knelt and wept openly, wretched deep sobs,
The boy a son to all of them, a tiny sparkle of light, in the longest darkness ever known. 

It went on, men dug tunnels crushed by 'cave In's' left to rot as they were already buried,
Rain, like hammer handles turned landscapes into muddy oceans, sludge poured into trenches,
In 1917 the battle of Passchendaele at Ypres, men drowned in shell craters, thick with mud,
Graves returned corpses, rivers of filth gushed, as war doesn't spare the dead or the buried.

Copyright © Terry Trainor | Year Posted 2015

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