Remembrance Day
By PAT PRENTICE

What did the Old Man tell you as shrapnel came out of his limb?

When he lay gasping and dying. Secrets, delirium, life so dim

He told me he got a tin helmet after the Dardanelles

But the German ones fitted better. Ours slipped off under the shells

How an Anzac night-time swimmer got to shore from retreating ship

And lit dozens of decoy camp fires to give the Turk guns the slip

He said sometimes sharpened shovels were better than bayonets

And a Fokker Dri once chased him over French picketline sets

A comrade jumped in the shit trench when he heard the bullets whine

How muzzles and Very lights lit up the night when parties went out from the line

A Canadian gun horse called Dumper that nobody else could ride

One day when the ground was exploding they charged through with a message and pride

Trench enemies left their defiance for after the others broke through

“Gott mit uns,” scrawled and for when they came back: “We've got mittens too”

Sikh saviours at Hellfire Corner dragged him to the bunker beneath

He woke up to terror and candle. In darkness with turbans and teeth

Bayonets sucked inside bodies when they were plunged in for the rout

Then the rifle had to be fired, so the recoil could wrench them out

Boy Germans were squashed flat by tanks when they were left tied to their guns

And dead men peeled on barbed wire and rats chewed bones on their runs

How men who scrambled over the top ran headless, blasted by Huns

What did Father Mulligan tell you when he blessed the Old Man in his grave?

He lowered his voice and he told me of the soul they conspired to save

How the Old Man screamed in his nightmares. (I heard from the bedroom next door

We shivered and waited for silence. Then the blessing of his resumed snore)

The mud and wet and the trench foot. Peering over the parapet

Prayers and fear and rosary beads. Bombardier boxer; memories met

How at 19, gassed and bludgeoned, he was sent home blinded, to die

He recovered before the Armistice. Went back for another try

How a big Scot, kilted and maddened, saved his life with a thrust and a roar

The haunting of killing eleven men. He never told me that score

How his health failed at last and forever when he stalled in the Second World War

A life of wheezing and retching and hiding old wounds in the head

Too proud and maimed, staying silent. It all disappeared with the dead

Rainbow ribbons and medals. Disability pension too paltry to spend

That's the reward for our heroes. What most will find out in the end

© Pat Prentice