The world through the window was hushed and becalmed

As darkness brought peace to the isle

He lounged on his pillows and waited for slumber

His wife dozed beside with a smile

At first he had drifted as most people will

When waiting to drop off at last

His mind offered images, faces remembered,

And places he’d seen in the past

With no rhyme or reason they flashed past his eyes

Though none of them caused him alarm

Just wonderful memories, subconscious dreams

Such musings that made him feel calm

Though his recollection was not so astute

To remember the trigger too well

But somewhere between his light nap and sleep

His Utopia turned to his hell

What first picture came he could not rightly say

Though unpleasantness he could recall

A sense of despair stopped his breath in his throat

And a fear held him tight in its thrall

His knee-jerk response to that eerie surround

Was a need and desire to be free

As he looked he was sure with no shadow of doubt

He was somewhere he’d no wish to be

To his left he saw mud piled up high in a wall

To his right side another the same

And spaced all along both the sides for their length

Lines of planks held them like a crude frame

He looked at the ground and his mud-spattered boots

Balanced barely on soaked slats of wood

And those planks rose and sank on a fetid vile soup

Like the mythical Styx was in flood

The foul water held not just debris and mud

But such blood as a slaughterhouse sluice

And a finger, still ringed, and a foot in its boot

Ebbed and flowed in that Dante-esque juice

A drenched heap of rags that had once been a man

Yet a boy in his prime floated past

His tin hat was askew and his chest all but gone

Where his young heart had beaten its last

Camouflaged in the much, trudging through all the gore

The soldiers in earth-covered wool

Seemed to walk without will or direction or hope

As if death drew them on with its pull

What he thought was a rock as he stumbled ahead

Was a beast he wished never to face

With its needle-sharp snout and a vile oily coat

A live rat had set his heart apace

But there was not one, nor yet ten, but a ton

Of those foul filthy vermin at play

They slid and they rolled and they scurried among

All that putrid debauch and decay

So he chose to look up, looking down raised his bile

To the thick leaden roof overhead

For the clouds raining down had all blackened the sky

As a fitting homage to the dead

Wretched smells wafted round, a miasma of scum

Filled his nostrils and coated his tongue

Metallic sweet corpses and gunpowder stench

Mixed with sulphur and mustard and dung

Acrid smoke billowed through as a bomb thudded near

And Beelzebub’s orchestra played

Blending wails of the dying with drumming of guns

At each crashing percussive grenade

His uniform clung like a sodden wool shroud

As he stood in that scar on the land

His peaked cap couldn’t keep any rain from his face

As the sky shed its tears for the damned

Where he’d stopped an arm rested, embraced his two shoulders

A chipper voice bellowed beside

“Come on Bill, you need to get out of the way,

This trench isn’t that flaming wide!”

Bill looked round to see who corralled him along

And he did because Bill couldn’t budge

At his side was Jack Smart grinning widely, his pal

So he fell into step through the sludge

For old Jack was Bill’s mate and the best friend he’d known

Since the two had been nippers at school

They’d once fought, then been friends, then both chased the same girl

Jack had won (he was nobody’s fool)

All at once they were inside and out of the rain

In a room that resembled a shed

It was damp and quite dark but a little bit warm

And for that there was much to be said

They sat on two boxes upended and cracked

And Jack took off his wet hat and sighed

“How the hell did we end up in this bloody hole?”

But his young mud-stained grin remained wide

Bill recalled how they’d signed up the summer before

For the glory, the pride and the sport

Bill’s father had huffed and Jack’s mother had cried

In a trice they’d been shod drilled and taught

All their halcyon days were soon left far behind

Blighty’s sceptre became Frenchy’s field

They’d sacrificed Saturday nights at the Gaumont

To march for Britannia’s shield

But pride and the glory got muddied at Flanders

And sullied at Ypres and the Somme

So there they were sitting like rats in a sewer

Awaiting the next damned Bosch bomb

“Cheer up mate,” said Jack, as he pulled out a smoke,

“I won’t let it happen to you.”

And Bill had to smile at Jack’s brash optimism

As always the best of the two

“But listen here, Billy,” he said, as his match flared

“I’m not sure we’ll both make it back.

I’ve got this idea there’s a shell with my name on.”

“Don’t say that, it’s unlucky, Jack.”

Jack drew on his snout and then let it out slowly,

“Can’t argue with fate, Billy, eh?

But promise that you will take care of Sally

She’s always loved you anyway.”

Before Bill could argue or make Jack deny it

The world all around them caved in

For lifetimes of seconds the place was in turmoil

The silence swept over the din

A pain in Bill’s shoulder and numbness all over

He lay there beneath a great weight

His ribs were restricted, his breathing a struggle

But he was alive thanks to fate

He bellowed for Jack but his shout was a whisper

The rubble just sucked it away

He tried to look round but bright stars filled his vision

Bill thought he might die where he lay

“Oi, Billy, you living?” The weak question roused him

“Yes Jack, I’m okay, I’m just stuck.”

“That shell with my name on just landed, I know it

But you’re alright, that was good luck.”

“You’re talking though, Jack, so you must still be living.”

“I am, but I feel bloody tired.”

“Tell Sally,” Jack croaked, “You’re the best of us both.”

 With a final weak cough he expired,

If the dust hadn’t dried up Bill’s tears he’d have cried them

But all he could spare was a groan

Yet he knew that he had to get out then for Sally

And Jack, to make sure he got home

Bill rocked back and forth under smashed wood and rock

And managed to free his right arm

He reached out to shove off the weight on his chest

But only soft cloth touched his palm,

Bill’s eyes grew accustomed to night in his bedroom

His cheeks and pyjamas were soaked

He thought of his friend and their time in the trench

And he wept, cried and sobbed till he choked,

A hand moved beside him and touched on his shoulder

“It’s over my darling,” she said

“Oh Sally,” Bill murmured, “he loved you my sweetheart,

Why didn’t he come back instead?”

She wrapped her arms round him and kissed him and held him

And drew his head close to her breast

“When you were both missing in action,” she whispered,

“My heart almost stopped in my chest,

See before you both left Jack had written a letter

To say how he knew I loved you

After that, Bill, my love it was you who I prayed for

Because Jack had wanted me to,

He’d said that his love would just go unrequited

And, if he survived through the war

He would travel the world seeking thrill and adventure

And never return to these shores,”

Bill realised he was the shell with Jack’s name on

Jack knew it was so all along

He’d sacrificed all for King George and a friend

Bill never knew Jack was so strong,

Then Bill as a grandfather looked at the pillow

Beside him, nobody was there

His beautiful Sally – wife, mother and gran –

Had gone to join Jack past the air

Bill thought of his girl and their sixty year marriage

Of Jack, of the pain and the loss,

He thought of the trenches since covered in poppies

And boys who slept under the moss

He looked back on ninety-two years of an innings

Still then not yet ready to part

And later that day he told me of his dream,

Of his friend, of the pain in his heart,

The tears in his eyes, although decades had passed,

Showed that time had not brought him relief

And although many moments had given him joy

his whole lifetime was shadowed with grief

He told me that Jack could have been my grandfather

Should never have been left behind

But Bill then found comfort in telling the tale

So his friend might live on in my mind,

Although Grandpa Bill looks down now from above

In his day he saw how the world turned

For his last words to me were a question he posed

Based on all of the lessons he’d learned,

“We killed people’s loved ones and watched our own perish

We sacrificed blood, tears and sweat,

Yet more wars have followed, more young lives been lost

What meaning then ‘Lest We Forget’?”

Written by the Award winning poet Sebastian Wolff

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