Age old and weary and not yet twenty-one

He no longer flinched at the crump of the guns

A blooded veteran of battles won and lost

Tortured by nightmares of the human cost

Keen boys arrived daily, more meat to grind

Replacing squandered men, they couldn’t find

They too were invited to dance upon the wire

To be forever swallowed deep into the mire

Mud filled trenches eventually ploughed again

The Minnies and Jack Johnsons all left by then

Old bones and poppies bloomed once more

Another dead soldier from a long-ago war

Hearing the news of the latest man found

No longer twenty, he was century bound

The horrors returned from deep in his mind

Haunted by faces of those left behind.

We who exist can only tend to their graves

For they gave their lives for a world to save

Never to grow old as they lay side by side

Remember them we must, or woe betide.

                             o0o