Friday 8 August 2014

A tribute Great War 1914 - 1918

A tribute to those who fought in the Great War 1914-18



Tribute to  WWI soliders


In 1914 they rose to the call
answering with loyalty
and patriotic footfall

For hope and glory they obeyed the imperial law
to help fight in the war that was to end all wars.
Now one hundred years later - same  place and same time  - the last post is playing and church bells chime

I stand on a ground that was once called no man’s land -
it was a desolate place of  barbwire and trenches and across the frontline spanned.

A surviving veteran of the hellish scene wrote:   “there was incessant gunfire and poisonous gas, that blinded and tore at lungs and throat.”

Now here I stand, as you once did, on that same soil  reminiscent in the killing, sorrow and grief
and breathe an air that ever evokes memories of  the horror, of disbelief.

The sun shines its warm rays today on poppies, wild flowers and fields afar
but on the horizon of many lost lives, there is still a sadness - forever a scar.

Never let the suffering, indifference to fellow men, the pain be forgotten
never let it be in vain
I proudly pay homage to the men who fell in the Great War of 1914 and today I commemorate the date
in my own lineage of time at the Menin Gate

A.Main 2014