GAIUS JULIUS CAESAR

 

Roman Politian Gaius Julius Caesar

The notorious Roman Geezer

Who was full of vinegar and starch

Met his end on the Ides of March

AT THE ELEVENTH HOUR

 

At the eleventh hour

Silence falls

Heads bow in reverence

Reflecting remembrance

Ordinary people

Stop to show respect

For those who fell

 

At the eleventh hour

A small group

Of Muslim youth

Chant descent

And wave banners high

“British soldier’s burn in hell”

And this small disrespectful group

Of Muslim youth

Burn poppies in the street

Desecrating that symbol

Of solemnity

And remembrance

Burning the poppies

In symbolic disrespect

 

Spitting on the dead,

Urinating on their graves

Or defecating on the cenotaph

Would be a less abhorrent act

By that small ignorant group

Of Muslim youth

The poppy does not discriminate

It doesn’t just represent

The white race

The Christian faith

European culture

It represents so much more

Every race

Every faith

From every continent

 

At the eleventh hour

That small group

Of Muslim youth

Who burnt the poppies

Disgraced themselves

And disgraced the memory

Of every Muslim soldier

Who fell on battlefields

Across the world

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 twig

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 figures 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

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

SHOUT IT FROM THE ROOF TOPS

 

I like Germany

I like the Germans

I have friends there

I worked for a time near Frankfurt

And I visit Berlin often

It’s my favourite city

They are nice people

Friendly and welcoming

They share our hopes

And our aspirations

We are so alike

We have always been alike

Well almost always

There were dark days

When they were seduced by evil

And let themselves down

So what happened?

What infected this nation?

This nation so like ourselves

How did the madness take them?

Why did they become inhuman?

Why did they set a new benchmark?

In their inhumanity

Why did the good people not rise up?

And oppose the evil

Why did they fail to stop it

Were the jews so bad

So unworthy of pity

Too worthless to be considered

For whatever reason it happened

They let it happen

The worst of them profited by it

The best of them turned a blind eye to it

But they were all guilty

And after the war

I think they felt the guilt

But they feel no guilt now

Now they try to hide behind a lie

Pretending it wasn’t really that bad

There were just a few bad men

And they are gone now

The Americans exaggerated everything

There were isolated incidents

No more than that

Let’s speak of it no more

Lest we offend Islam

Well Islam should be offended

As it was the Turks of the Ottoman empire

Who taught their German allies

The meaning of Holocaust

When they annihilated the Armenians

I say let’s speak of it

Let’s never stop speaking of it

And if offence is caused, then so be it

If it prevents it’s like

From ever happening again

OUT OF SERVICE

 

There was a ship rotting in a naval dock

I asked a man if he knew its history

He said it was a Minesweeper once

I didn’t press him but it seemed to me

For a ship to be a Minesweeper once

Was not really a unique ability

 

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

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

A WING AND A PRAYER

 

If the wings travel faster than the fuselage,

And you are in a helicopter, that’s ok

However, if you are in any other aircraft

It’s probably a very good time to pray

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

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

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