Bravest Sons of India – Neuve-Chapelle, 1915.
(Linking Pin Sonnet – Dr. Joseph Spence Sr. Style)
India’s sons marched where guns roared in flame,
Flame lit their path as the Lahore men onward pressed,
Pressed with the Meerut through wire none could tame,
Tamed only by hearts in brave Garhwal dressed.
Dressed for the storm, Gurkha steel cut the way,
Way through the fire where the Kaiser’s men stood,
Stood firm for the flag in that Flanders day,
Day paid in blood for the world’s greater good.
Good men they were, yet no grave bears their name,
Name clearly carved instead on memorial white,
White stone in France tells the tale of their fame,
Famed in the East, now in every nations’ sight.
Sight holds their valor where red poppies still sway,
Swayed by the winds, they march with us today.
© USA Goodwill Ambassador, Professor Dr. Jospeh S. Spence Sr. August 12, 2025. All Rights Reserved.
Flying over the front lines
with the French Escadrille Lafayette
a brown and barren belt below
a strip of murdered nature and yet
during the warm months of spring and summer
seeds in the shattered ground would grow
delicate vibrant crimson flowers
in row after row after row
and in those poppy fields
that's how we remember them
all the fallen soldiers
those unforgotten gallant men
tho' Waterloo was won in a day
in a mad minute this battle was waged
while larks sang overhead in the month of May
four weeks and more it raged
before they beat the Hun had them on the run
it soon became apparent to the allied commanders
it's a long way from the playing fields of Eton
to the poppy fields of Flanders
The once battlefields of Flanders
Were soon clothed with Poppy red
Perhaps a natural reflection of
All the blood that had been shed.
The War Cemeteries laid out
In lines of stones or crosses
A constant stark reminder of
The scale of a nation’s losses.
Each bearing rank and name
Just brutally stating the fact
Listing the tragedy of a war
And it’s inevitable impact.
Many of them are anonymous
Their identities not known
Only that they were casualties.
The battlefields had grown.
With a simple inscription
That could say no more
In carved block letters
A soldier of the Great War
Crops of simple monuments
Like lines and rows of teeth
Signifying to the world at large
A hero lies interred beneath.
Though visitors know
Just what to expect
The very magnitude
Brings stunned respect
Some stand in silence
Some stand and cry
Some quietly ask
The simple question why?
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/
Where once the mighty timid
Flanders soldier shook
Bathed in foriegn mud underfoot
All but one and two a man
Hard fought and pressed with bayonets clenched in hand abreast
expedient beating pumping chest
Side by side shoulder deep
To breach to cross go over top
To run and face a hail of rapid bullets
And fall beside my brethren brother's
called selflessly to arms
For to return name unknown
With all and but medal to hang
and place my life and times upon
Heroic not in death and historic
battles rolled out come
rememberance day for poppy
sales
But rather in the blood of gallant
resplendent regimental fellow
soldiers saved
Who regail the the tales and
uphold the memories and names
of those solent brave
To whom they owe their own
salvation and lives to this day to
To them we say
We kneel
We bow
We must
We shall salute
Lest we forget
Unless forget we lest
The debt of gratitude yet still not paid
Is the price of peace
Is death and war
Flanders
In the dawn over Flanders
Wounded horses move no more
And dead soldiers look small.
The stillness is fragile beautiful.
Soldiers in dugouts smoke
Eat from cans
Waits for another the fighting
To commence.
God sighs deeply
He had given us a free will
He had been rash
Regrets his frivolities.
Famished and flagging footsoldiers;
facing fatigue, fitful fever,
faeces and foul, foetid fungi.
Fostering feelings, frustrated,
for this faraway, foreign field.
Forays so fraught with fine failure;
forfeiting furtive and fiendish,
fatally fettered from the first.
Forged by such fatuous fawners,
for folly to feud for a field.
Forced forwards with fleetness of foot;
firearms flash and fragments fly far,
feigning the firmament aflame.
Forces fight so ferociously,
fratricide set free on this field.
Forthright and filial feelings;
families of fine forefathers,
fought fiercely, for fear we’d forget.
Familiar flora forms focus,
for the fallen in Flanders Field.
- - - - - - - - -
8 syallables on every line (www.howmanysyllables.com)
November 2018
Entered in Brian Strand's "Contest No 515".
(1st Place)
I wanted to do something special - and a bit different - to mark the centenary of the end of The Great War (11 November 1918). This poem is dedicated to all the brave souls lost defending freedom during that terrible conflict (and all conflicts since).
[with apologies to Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae]
We are the winkers! Short days ago,
We played all night, until dawn's glow,
Squopped and were squopped: for here we go
In the Fields of Winks, to hop them low.
Here we lie beneath the poppies
Blowing in the Flanders air
Do not forget our sacrifice
Do not forget that we were there
Young men forged in heat of battle
Neighbors, brothers, sons
Lost in time, with just our markers
Lost to lie, beneath the sun
Remember us as men of valor
Remember what we came to do
We came, and died, do not forget us
We gave our lives up, just for you
Forget us not, beneath the poppies
Where the sky is no longer dark
Remember us as long dead heroes
We came, we fought, we left our mark
Forget us not, please pass the torch on
Forget us not, more than this day
Forget us not, we were all soldiers
And we remain so....all the way!!!
FLANDERS LAMENTED
In NAM we watched rare shrapnel bloom
no fields of poppies marked our doom.
So trusting we marched forth to save
yielding grief’s flowers at every grave.
Those alive cannot console friends who lay
in forlorn peace through out each day.
The only answer for each to die,
far from Flanders Fields do I lie.
The lighted torch in star strewn skies
no more the beacon to guide our eyes;
we know now how truth is spurned
the lessons of war are never learned;
the count of bodies continues its gain
war by war inflicting its pain.
Why disturb from sleep those who fell,
and dare to say “for all is well.”
We, the survivors, the unburied dead
impatiently wait without dread.
The final defeat will yet be faced,
for us there is no need of haste,
forgotten in the grace of man
remembered in God’s greater plan;
the only answer for each implied,
far from Flanders Fields will I lie.
Red Poppies of Flanders
Digging trenches
Dawn to dusk
Forcing shovels
In the dust...
Weather's freezing
Clothes to skin
While it's raining,
Yet, again...
Rank and muddy
Head to toe
Slip and sliding
As we go...
The blinding lights
The deaf'ning sounds
The endless nights
In muddy grounds...
Trenches flooding
Through the ranks
Muddy waters
Breach the banks...
Wounds ooze bleeding
Muddy mix
Smell the Reaper
Reaching Styx...
Men and horses
Side by side
Some lay wounded
Others died...
Still we hold to
Fleeting hope
Among the shells
And stinking smoke...
Through fields of mud
And charred stick trees
Where nothing grows
Deep stained in blood...
But the poppy
Bright blood red
From these grounds
Of the dead...
These battle-scared
Fields' true price
Remembers All
Who sacrificed.
deborah burch©07.21.17
A duck slowly paddles across the still water,
Disturbing the reflection of brooding storm clouds
Above. The pond sits close to the top of the ridge;
Precisely round, there are no streams entering or
Leaving to explain its presence. Cold wind keens
Through the mis-shapen trees nearby; the thin sound
Is haunting, a threnody played by a distant piper.
A gust catches the loose board on a ruined farmhouse,
The sudden bang provoking a startled shiver.
Splashing rain against the cheek awakens dormant
Memories, and the landscape turns barren, a
Wasteland, the pond revealed as a smoking crater.
Vision clears. In the distance, a red poppy marks
Where the defiant piper fell, his lament for himself.
In Flanders Fields
In Flanders fields the poppies grow;
Their roots reach down to twine amongst the bones,
The mouldering bones.
Each skull in grinning disbelief voices
Its eternal question, for what? And no answer comes,
No answer comes.
There are no lungs to find;
Long rotted from within, from gasping breaths of gas,
From choking gas.
No flesh remains to clothe the
Bones; torn from limbs by hammer blows of fate,
Cruel, indifferent fate.
No heroes these, but common men
Who selfless thought to serve, to do the right thing,
Unquestioned right thing.
Their souls now wait deep underground;
Deep amongst the rusting, shattered fragments of twisting Death,
Of youthful Death.
Only the Sun kissed faces red;
That wave upon the land above, serve to remind,
Ever remind us.
In Flanders fields the poppies grow.
(With acknowledgement for inspiration to Lt Col John McCrae)
To the memory of my Grandfather, who endured the Somme and spoke not a word of it. Each year, he and my Grandmother made thousands of poppies to sell on Armistice Day for the survivors of that Contemptible Little Army.
Sneak, sneak, power, power.
My little carton of milk.
God protects him.
All over the Ned.
Sneak, Sneak, twizzle of eye.
Light light, almost on.
Light, light, candle option.
Of course, rubbber.
Coming close.
Ned catches you.
A gentle wind asks
Answered, simply, why not still
Said family grieve
.
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