“You’re fighting for a just cause”
That is the
justification
“You’ll make the world
a safer place”
“You’ll protect your
nation”
These are the
politician’s words
Spoken with passion
and pride
Spoken away from the
line of fire
Spoken from where
warmongers hide
Men of empty rhetoric
These politicians
never see danger
Safe on their leather
seats
They never hear shots
fired in anger
The British in the past
Seemed to have more
grit
The Londoners of old
Bombarded in the Blitz
Shook their fists in
defiance
Such were the plucky
Brits
People alive today
Would never stand for
it
They’d shout about
human rights
And probably serve a
writ
My parents were born between the wars,
And in their day
People were cut from
different cloth
A sturdy resilient
cloth
A cloth that bound the
nation together
They were tougher
people
Who lived through
tough times
The general strike,
the depression
The Second World War
20 years of rationing
But life had greater
value
Because its pleasures
came hard
And life was more than
a measure
Of what could be
possessed
The post baby boomers
Roll their eyes at
such talk
But our country is
weaker
And its people
Less sturdy, less
resilient
Today we are a ragged
nation
Just a collection of
frayed threads
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
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
