The Unknown Soldier
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We had no cause to hate him;
A chap like you and me,
With a mother, or a sweetheart,
Or a wife, or p’raps all three.
He’d trained as hard as we had,
His orders were the same:
Rout and kill your “enemy”.
Obliterate his name!
Then Mars put us on different sides
Of that field so far away,
And Fortune sealed that I, not he,
Would fight another day.
It wasn’t like a rugby match
Where the better team had won.
There wasn’t any glory
And it wasn’t any fun.
Just an emptiness that settled
In a corner of each soul
As all men breathed, and tallied-up
The losses on the roll.
No ringing-out of trumpets,
But laments of sweat and smoke;
And I still wonder every day,
'Bout the name of that poor bloke.
They litter fields around the world
Under headstone, cross or tell;
Names and bodies cast awry
By the blast of every shell.
So, as we remember those we lost,
The sacrifice they gave,
Spare a thought within our heart
For those whose who know no grave.
- AMB
Memorial to the Missing, Thiepval, France
(Picture: Commonwealth War Graves Commission)
