By Laurie Wilkinson
Your country needs you the posters said
And you can fight beside your chums,
So off they went to the war in France
And said goodbye to girls and mums.
Very ordinary chaps, not heroes yet
Were all excited, feeling hearts soar,
Marching off to their great adventure
To win a war that will end all war.
Well that was the propaganda then
And may even have been said in fear,
At any time after, or in a future year.
Because the unprecedented bloodbath
Caused mass suffering and deprivation,
As world war one’s attrition dragged on
With atrocities that stunned a nation.
So men who were totally unprepared
Witnessed sights that shouldn’t be seen,
Like petrified men drowning in mud,
Gassed, or blown up in deaths obscene.
Thus casualty figures hardly believable
Rose as the slaughter went on unabated
For that final push was regularly tried
On wasted, bloody ground not sated.
With thousands of men mowed down
Strewn in agony or a hideous death,
Many crucified across the barbed wire
As devils disciples gasped for breath,
While their evil work was continued
But performed by unknowing men
Who had only answered a patriotic call
That took them to hell there and then.
And so agonising slaughter continued
By new weaponry invented to kill,
Flowers of a generation sent to solve
Arguments that war never will.
Author Bio:
Originally from East London, I now live in Eastbourne and am known as The Psychy Poet due to my expansive career in psychiatry in which I have a forensic psychiatry degree.
I have published 15 books of my poetry, and alongside entertaining, which includes reading my poems on cruise ships, I donate all above my costs to the charity Help for Heroes. At present my total raised is over £11,5oo and rising.
My poems have won awards and been published in national newspapers, magazines, online publications and regular columns of mine. I have guested on BBC Radio frequently and other local stations too. A national radio read my poems out as well.
My books are mostly in four sections of romance, humour, reflection and tragedy and I also write many poems on commission.
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