The Trenches with their banks of mud and rotten wood,
Barbed wire stained and rusted
With the blood of the innocent,
Trembles with the vibration of fresh explosions.

Then there’s the mud,
Churned up by wave after agonising wave of shellfire,
And torrential rain.
Men huddled like sheep against the endless storm
Of bombs and grenades.

Men stranded on their own barbed wire,
Their silhouettes stain the blood red sky
Like blots of black ink on red paper,
Weighed down by guns, weapons,
Half buried and caked with dry mud,
Almost unrecognisable as the humans they are.

Men sucked under,
Drowning in the deep pools of sticky mud,
The screams of the injured and dying,
Echoing through the still air,
Like nails down a blackboard.
Men collapsed, able to go no further,
Men shot, impaled,
Men with arms, legs missing,
Or like carriages on a train,
Following each other to the same cruel fate.
All this and only for a few metres of land….

Yet,
Here we are years later,
The fighting over,
Land lost,
And gained,
The poppy,
Emblem of peace and remembrance,
World-Wide,
Covers the War-zone like a quilt of red,
Marking the spot of the blood-shed,
And lives lost,
And serves as a reminder,
For we must remember, not forget,
Those that died to give us eternal Freedom.