These foreign fields, Where my Granddad once
Marched behind tanks
Rifle butt under
Regulation starched armpit,
Turned green to muddy red
With caterpillar tread and shot.
Where death was
A by-product of survival.
Beneath flat skies,
As grey as a December Sunday,
An army of farmers
Hid village wives and daughters
From foreign men,
Each with sorrow in his hands
Or on his brow,
Preparing to greet their fate.
Where my Granddad met death
For the first time, as he
Refused sons the right
To become grandfathers.
Now in nursing home fatigues
He remembers what
The booze and Alzheimer's
Has not stolen,
The old gang: Mick, Patrick and Ernie
Boys left in that field,
Who just months before call up
Were tilling wheat fields,
Now lost beneath bricks and mortar,
Where they turned mud to green
With plough and tractor tread.
Soon he will meet death
For the final time,
When he goes to that foreign land
And the old gang are united once more.
Nicely done Paul.
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