War And Warriors - Paul Curtis (top ten books to read .txt) 📗

across the sea
The place I left behind
So I could die fighting for the free

PEACE IN OUR TIME

When idle thoughts lead me back down Memory lane
I think of Mr Chamberlain stepping from the plane
Desperately clutching that piece of paper he waved
That promise of hope that Europe would be saved

How we all held that precious hope in our hearts
Before the promise of peace finally fell apart
And how that hope evaporated to leave me scared
When Chamberlains voice said war was declared

Hitler’s broken promise broke Neville’s heart
Another world war blew his appeasement apart
Then up steps Winston Churchill into the fray
His boldness and stiff resolve eventually won the day
A broken man, Chamberlains life came to an end
Many years before the war he tried so hard to prevent

THE DEVIL IN THE SKIES

From the dark cloudless skies
Comes the engines droan
Of that unseen and menacing evil
In grim formation flown
Then comes the sirens song
Telling of impending death
As the city looks skyward
Holding a collective breath
Long beams of light
Searched out the evil flock
Criss-crossing the darkness
In every quarter of the clock
Towards the shelters
The civilian’s ant like scurry
As the guns began desperately
Trying to stop the enemy
Fire and death rains down
Upon the weary populace
In macabre equality
The walks of life feel deaths embrace
As buildings fall to the ground
In rubble and dust
Life and history instantly erased
After the bombs combust
Then come the sirens again
Calling out loud, all clear
And from underground
The jaded survivors reappear
To count the cost
Of the night at the gates of hell
Then thanking God
For keeping them safe and well
Gaps on the ravaged skyline
Missing Churches and hostelries
Fire still burns where once stood
Homes and factories
Hoping against hope
That their home survived the night
But despite all this
They never thought to give up the fight


OVER THE TOP LADS

Over the top lads
Let’s do it for the King
Up and at em Tommies
Let’s do the Kaiser in

Heads up lads
Let’s show some heroism
Death to the Hun
Hurrah for Jingoism

Over the top we go
Putting aside our fears
Then the hail of shot
And we fall like tears

A generation’s youth
Drowning in the mud
Ghosts of our future
Drowning in our blood

Stout hearted we came
Beneath the Belgian sky
We came to fight for honour
Instead we fall and die


VILLAIN OF THE PEACE

In 1914, David Lloyd George
The British prime minister of the day
Could have avoided the Great War
By simply not getting in Germany’s way


DID YOU FIGHT IN THE WAR DADDY?

Did you fight in the war daddy?
My mother asked my grandpa
He only answered shortly yes
She had picked at an old scar
She jumped for joy and hugged him
And gave out a great hurrah

Did you win the war daddy?
My mother asked my grandpa
He only answered shortly yes
She was proud of her old da
She wanted to know more
But that didn’t get her far

She was just his little girl
And didn’t know the truth
The horrors that he had seen
And all that wasted youth
But these things he kept inside
And could not say to little Ruth

The truth he could not tell her
Was that nobody won the war
Both sides were the losers
If anyone was keeping score
That was the bitter truth of it
The Germans just lost more

HARRY’S LAST POST

Soldiers bear the last of the lads
In casket draped in the union flag
And then a reverent silence falls
Before the last post’s mournful call
Trumpeting his journey into grace
To feel his comrades warm embrace
Goodbye Harry a soldier known
The final Tommy going home


AN ORDERED PEACE

An ordered peace
Now hold sway
Where once was chaos
And hell came to earth
Nature has returned
To repaint the landscape
The mud and the blood
Are of the past
The alien terrain
Featureless and without end
Are but a distant memory
The mud now green grass
And poppies grow
Red as the blood that fed them
In the savage harvest
The landscape now is neat
The birds have returned
And grace the trees unknowing
The farmers work the land
Where once the soldiers trod
National flags still flutter
Above ordered plots
For silent armies
All neat and tidy
Uniform patches
Of uniformed crosses
Serried ranks
Of white polished stone
Where lads and pals parade
With eternal regiments


GHURKA WARRIOR

Ghurka warrior
Proud and loyal
How can you take
This cruel betrayal

Always williing
To take up arms
To suffer war
And all its harms

You defended empire
And commonwealth
Fighting hand to hand
And in stealth

You stood and fought
In our nations name
How we forsake you
To our governments shame


Ghurka warrior
Loyal and proud
You now have justice
Let us cheer you aloud

HOLOCAUST

Since the cooling of the Nazi’s oven fires
And the fading glow of the funeral pyres
The world has had to endure the mutterings
Of those who deny the holocausts sufferings
The inane ramblings of conspiracy theorists
The bigoted bile of Islamic fundamentalists
The holocaust now stricken from the syllabus
We must not speak of it lest we cause a fuss
We must appease the liberal sentiments
For God forbid we might cause offence
But the holocaust happened, SHOUT it aloud
Shout it in the face of the apathetic crowd
For if we do not condemn the holocaust deniers
Somewhere, one day they will relight the fires


THE LAST TOMMY
John “Harry” Patch
17th June 1898 – 25th July 2009

God bless you Harry Patch
The last British Tommy to fall
Jack, Jill and Maudie are waiting
Can you hear that distant bugle call?
The serried ranks stand cheering
Calling you to glory Harry
Calling you to reassemble
You must go now no time to tarry
Jack, Jill and Maudie Allen
Are waiting to greet you proudly
Goodbye Harry so long old friend
Can you hear the bugle calling loudly?
Come to the cookhouse door boys
Come to the cookhouse door
Oh fallen heroes, oh hearty lads
I fear we will see your like no more


(Jack, Jill and Maudie Allen where the nicknames of Harry Patch’s Lewis machine gun crew who were killed by shell fire on Pilkem Ridge, Passchendaele, Belgium in 1917)

PROUD HERITAGE

Like many Englishmen
When our history is revealed
My forebears shed their blood
Men who never thought to yield
On the battlefields of England
And on many a foreign field

GRANDDADS WAR

In South Africa during the Boer War
Granddad got the key of the door
In France during World War 1
He lay wounded when the day was done

He could have met a very bloody end
But for the bravery of his friend
So he lived to fight another day instead
And died an old man in his own bed

THE SOLDIER’S LAST MUSTER

When the sun is in the west
You will safely go to rest
At the setting of the sun
With your soldiers duties done
You will feel your God is nigh
As you ascend up to the sky
And in earths fading light
Where tears diminish sight
Where loved ones question why
A new star will grace the sky
Gleaming bright in the firmament
Proudly amongst the regiment
To mark the passing of a soldier son
Who died not seeing victory won
Now the time that moves us most
The plaintive lament of the last post
For those falling fighting foes
Heads bow as the bugle blows


BEFORE THE KAISER CAME

Before the Kaiser came
Swallows fed on the wing
Above green meadows
Butterflies danced on the breeze
And birdsong filled the copses

Then the Kaiser came
And no longer did birds sing
Mud filled the meadows
Gunfire echoed on the breeze
And rats fed on the corpses


FLANDERS ENDURED

A wondrous pastoral scene
Green fields and meadows
Woodland and hedgerows
Unchanged for centuries
A beautiful place, a safe place
Then came war’s unkind caress
Which swept away the green
Repainted the pastoral scene
In shades of brown
And turned everything to mud
Tree trunks devoid of branches
Stood like rows of rotted teeth
In the mouth of hell
The fetid stench of detritus
Filled the air
All this did Flanders endure
The blood, the mud, the tears
For four long years
Now another kinder hand
Has touched the land
And colour has returned
From the paint box of peace

SERRIED ROWS OF CROSSES

The landscape changed
From peace to bloody war
A hellish muddy landscape
Those men had to endure

And when war was ended
The living had moved on
The dead remained on parade
To forever guard the Somme

The landscape changed
From bloody war to peace
A sombre mark of the passing
Of those who fell before the cease

Serried ranks of white crosses
Marking those who stayed
To be forever remembered
These fallen comrades on parade

THE DAY DAD WENT TO BELSEN

The tank stopped abruptly
And we sat open mouthed
At what we beheld
Our brains could not assimilate
What our eyes were seeing
Great mounds of …. What?
It can’t be that.
All the horrors of war
We had witnessed, experienced
Since D-day
Did not prepare us
For what Belsen held in store
A place devoid of God
A place where even birdsong was banished
We dismounted and approached on foot
As each step brought us closer
Our worst fears were realised
We saw that the mounds were indeed bodies
Or something likened to bodies
Then I saw an androgynous figure
Stood at the fence
A dirty little bag of bones
Wrapped in dirty rags
Bony fingers clutching the wire
Like a birds feet gripping a trig
I reasoned it was a girl
As the rags might well have been a dress
“We are English” I said
“Don’t be afraid”
Her fleshless face was beyond gaunt,
Her shaved head little more than a skull
Her huge eyes were so black and deep
I could see into her soul
A weak smile played round her mouth
And tears welled up in her huge eyes
I would not have believed it possible
For her desiccated form
To have held enough moisture for tears
But they were there
And they ran down the grubby cheeks
Of the little bag of bones
And dripped onto her ragged dress
We ran to the gates
And forced them open
Then we stepped into the jaws of hell
More skeletal figure appeared
From amidst the piles of rotting corpses
Bemused and disbelieving
They hugged us, and thanked us
Some cried, some laughed
We gave them water
And fed them our rations
Not realising we were finishing
What the Germans had started
The food was too rich
For their weak emaciated bodies
What we didn’t realise
Was we were killing them with kindness
The girls name was Elise
She was the same age as me
But she died the next day
Her face with the huge tear filled eyes
Haunted my dreams
All of the days of my life
Penetrating my soul
And breaking my heart
My only consolation
Was that she at least knew kindness
Once more before she died


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