This was once a sea of mud
Where thousands bled!
Before it reverted to!
A field of Flanders Poppy Red.
Do lines of ghostly squaddies!
Plough through ethereal mire!
In an endless quest to!
Charge the enemy barbed wire.
Do Mill Bombs explode!
As machine guns bark!
Sending many of the brave!
Into death's final dark.
How many bodies sank
Into that glutinous paste
Just futile victims of
A futile war's waste.
Do those shades fight bravely
Or do they fight with despair
Knowing it was sheer folly
That they were ever there.
The Flanders Poppy thrives
It's vivid scarlet red
An enduring tribute to those
Many brave but wasted dead.
And the massed white tombstones
In their precise lines and ranks
Are tended with love and care
In sincere but inadequate thanks
17 October 1916 the Battle of The Somme enterd its 109th day and had 32 more to run. It lasted 141 day in total. It saw the first use of the tank in battle, and extensive use of air power.
Casualties: British and Empire: 420,000, French: 200,000, German: between 434,000 and 500,000.
It was classed as “inconclusive.”
100 Years On I feel like crying/
Categories:
air power, anger, history, in memoriam,
Form: Rhyme
I love you man
A Story From Nam
We were seventeen or eighteen in Nam
we became friends forever.
No more than friends.
Soldiers get closer than wives.
We went to sleep saying
I love you man.
We switched letters
For our girlfriends.
In case… well just in case.
The bullets rained
in the clearing that night.
I can still see the tracer lights.
Guys fell down all around me.
Crying everywhere.
Air power cleared them away.
I looked for Joe he was lay there.
I held him close
like a baby as he left us.
His last words
I love you man.
I whispered to him
Not as much
as I love you Man
.
I did not notice I had been hit.
After six months I returned home.
In West Virginia his beautiful girl
Opened the door of a small trailer.
She had a baby boy in her arms.
Her blue eyes welled with tears.
I passed the unopened letter to her.
I lied and said the blood
on it was mine.
She passed the baby
to me to hold
As she read the letter.
I kissed his tiny forehead.
And said see buddy
You’re not dead at all
I love you Man
Categories:
air power, baby, best friend, death
Form: Free verse