They stood so tall,
So tall and fast
Their uniforms decked with polished brass
For two whole minutes the silence did last
Blue, black, red and khaki
Air Force, Navy, Marines, Army
And each one did so wear upon them,
that little flower that grew among them
Amongst the crosses, row on row
On Flanders, Passchendale, the Somme and Marne
Oh, how they did grow
At once the bugle did sound again
Breaking the silence, once again
The silence to remember, oh so many men
The silence that did mark the end
When the country would cease to send
So many off to fight a war
They’d be home by Christmas, so many were sure
A glorious war?
A ghastly war?
That we remember, forevermore
‘But what does it mean?’ a young lad did ask,
To his Father, as the soldiers passed
Their duty, as always, unsurpassed
Past the many crosses, marked
He turned to his son, and began to answer;
‘Well, it’s for people like these, and like my own Father’s Father,
Your Great Grandad Tommy was the man they were after,
He would fight for King and Country, and go so much farther’
And the man he did speak of, that soldier called Tommy,
He was young, in his prime, eager and bonnie
But little would he know, little of what would be remembered by the poppy
‘Well, he’s Tommy from the village, Tommy from the shop,’ they said
‘There goes Tommy, to see the Kaiser off’
Tommy’s off to war, Tommy’s heading off
‘But he can’t go, he’s just a boy,’ how some were heard to say
But off to the recruiting sergeant, off he was today
‘Tommy will see the Hun off,’ others so did say
‘Tommy’s off! Tommy’s off! He’s o’er the hills and far away’
‘Well here are your boots and here’s your tin hat,
Here’s your wool greatcoat, you’ll be needing that’
And one more item, so the captain did tell
‘Here is your rifle, now shoot with it well’
And so he would shoot with it
Shoot it so well
Through the hundreds of miles of death
And thousands of yards of hell.
‘Day three on the front’, he would write off to home
‘I may be at war, but I’m by no means alone
I have friends by my side, of that I do know
The lads I am with will see me through this whole show
Atkins is one of them, and he likes often to ask,
“Well what’s this war about?” in the spare moments that pass
“Why does Lord Kitchener make us do this whole task?”
But I promise you dearest, I’ll be back in not long
When the fighting will end, and we play our last marching song.’
But the war it dragged on, now 1918
The battle raged on, and the things Tommy had seen
Well nothing before it was quite so obscene
Nothing he’d imagined back in 1914
But to get home still, was he so keen
But the pain, the shame, the endless rain
Of the shells that hit the ground again
Hitting the earth with a terrible thud
Throwing up rubble, and clods of mud
Tommy sees the chaos, the heartbreak and blood
In that terrible trench, where the dead did flood.
And the mire, the wire, the raging fire!
The cannon smoke it was so dire
‘But why is it us,’ Atkins said
‘Us who must face the enemy’s ire’
But poor old Atkins, well, he soon did fall
Struck by shrapnel, like so many more
Like so many that were yet to fall, and so many that did so before
Another one taken by this terrible war
The war, so rightly remembered, forevermore
But Atkins’ question required an answer
And on the eleventh hour, Tommy did ponder
On the eleventh day of the month of November
When cannon fell silent, Tommy did remember
The thing Atkins asked, and so Tommy did wonder
‘Why are we here,’ was the question so posed
Why was he there, could anyone know?
Know any more than a son who asks to his father,
‘What’s it all about?’ a whole hundred years later
Now in a time that is so much safer
Where it’s easy to forget those who volunteered for danger
For to do the cowardly thing was not in their nature
But all of a sudden, there was a strange breeze
And then came a whisper, which made them weak to their knees
‘It’s Tommy here,’ so the whisper did say
‘I see you’ve been asking the same question again
The same one as old Atkins, just in a slightly different way
Well to answer you why, and my friend Atkins too
Why myself and he fought, and why the poppy is worn by you
For this is a world where terrible things happen
And where people can jump on an awful bandwagon
And in the wars and regimes, not so long after mine, how that did happen
And if we did not know of that, we would be so lacking
But when you look back through the dark clouds of history,
You can hope to do better, to keep freedom and harmony
And so every year, when you wear a poppy,
You are so reminded of why you are free
And you pay heed to our sacrifice, so you can be wiser than me’
Angus Andrews, 2018.
The Warsmith 