We Will Remember Them

I posted this poem once before, but have decided to post it again as it's 100 years since the Armistice on Sunday. I hope you enjoy it. 

WE WILL REMEMBER THEM.

I’ll never truly understand
How World War I began.
The death of Archduke Ferdinand
Started the deaths of many more,
The young, the old, the rich, the poor.
All died with guns in hand.

My Grandad went with Uncle Jim
And Our Poor Willie, too.
They sent them off, singing a hymn.
Grandad went to Gallipoli,
Uncle Jim left his love, Polly.
Gas in trenches did kill him.

I cannot see, in my mind’s eye
Grandad with gun in hand.
A peaceful man, sent out to die.
He fought for us, for you and me
So we can live and so that we
Safely in our beds may lie.

Grandad came home, and Willie too,
But millions more did not.
Their duty they all had to do.
They died in fear, in noise, in blood.
Everything was caked in mud.
Yet in those fields the poppies grew.

The War to end all wars, they said,
So terrible were the deaths.
The youth of Europe all lay dead.
Yet 21 short years to come
Another war. Once more a gun
In young men’s hands brought death.

One hundred years have passed since then.
What have we learned? Not much!
Too many men are killing men.
Wars still abound around the world.
Bombs and missiles still are hurled
At those who disagree with them.

I hope you liked this poem. Please leave a comment.

In view of the recent tweets and threats by both Donald Trump and Kim Jung-un we seem to be reverting to  a similar situation that existed in the 60s. That of fear of a nuclear war. 

A couple of nights ago, I watched a programme about  what would happen in in a nuclear war. It was one of the most frightening things I've seen.


In the 1960s, people were afraid that a nuclear war was a very real possibility. After all, it had only been 15 years, in 1960, since the USA dropped a hydrogen bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It was also the era of the 'cold war', and everyone was afraid of Russia, or rather the USSR as it was then, a vast empire ruled by Russia. It was in this climate I wrote the following poem.
It is the only poem that exists from that time. It is also the only poem of mine ever to have been published before as a poem and not as part of a novel. It was published in the student magazine of UMIST, in Manchester.

A Plea for Peace

Now we have created something
That threatens to destroy.
One error, one mistake
And what is left for us
But Death.

I see the ruins of a country
That once was powerful.
Now there is nothing but
Ruins, dust, decay
And Death.

I hear the cries of suffering people
Many people, old and young
They cry in agony to God,
Please give us peace
Through Death.

But

The only true peace we can have on Earth
Is through remembrance of our Saviour's birth.