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Queen Bess's Uniform

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As a young man I served in the Royal Navy and was involved in the Falklands War of 1982.
When I wrote this poem in 2007, I was trying to give at least some sort of explanation to a question often asked by those who have never been in Uniform - a question that I have never adequately been able to answer - "Why?"

First published in 2007 on the South Atlantic Medal Association website and subsequently self-published in "Around My World in Eighty Poems" (Amazon KDP) in 2020.

Listen to poem:

Queen Bess's Uniform We didn’t want the frostbite We didn’t want the burns We didn’t want to leave our homes And families far astern. We didn’t like the future As we grimly sailed away But we wore Queen Bess’s Uniform And did it anyway. We didn’t want the battle Or the bayonets at night We didn’t want to lose our lives In such a distant fight We didn’t want the air raids Every moment of the day. But we wore Queen Bess’s Uniform And did it anyway. We didn’t want a medal Or parades in front of crowds We didn’t go there Just because we wanted to look proud. If we’d known then what we know now We might have stayed away But we wore Queen Bess’s Uniform And did it anyway.

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