Remembrance

A historical poem. These were definitely the exception to the rule back in my early writing days. They'd become a lot more common later on, I'm pleased to say!

This one is an imagining of the hidden links between generations, and how history can 'repeat itself'. Once again, a theme that I'd explore again more than once.

Thierville is a village in Eure, Normandy, well known as the only commune in France that lost no-one in either of the World Wars (or the Franco-Prussian War). This is in stark contrast to the many English and Welsh 'Thankful Villages', all of whose servicemen returned. 

REMEMBRANCE

Bourges.

The old farmer sits and watches

As the young men go by

To their deaths he knows

A tear in his eye.

He sits and remembers

Forty years before

In the far-off Ardennes

One of those young men

Was him.

Nineteen there were

One for each of their years

But he was the one

The only one

That got out alive.

A Prussian ambush killed his friends

Now he watches the young men

And desperately hopes

That when this is all over

He will see them return

To farm with him

The good earth of the Berrichonne fields.

But no

Four years later

Twenty-two return

Out of forty.

A sickness follows them

Not from Prussia the old man’s death came

But from Spain.

Twenty-two years on

He doesn’t live to see

The twenty-two who survived

Fall to their knees

Gasping their last

Amid the Panzer shells raining down

On the Ardennes

Perpetual grave of the young men.

On the marble

Their names in two separate groups

Friends separated by stone

For evermore

Above them their fathers

Names from the three wars.

Thierville

Normandy.

No memorial here

Alone in France

No men are lost

In the three wars.

The young men did grow old

And weary

The sun sets

And thankfully

The village forgets.

Thanks to Sting for Children’s Crusade.