A Soldiers Lament

Will I ever hear the wind sough in the trees as I lie in my trench in the night? Will I ever hear our Anna's laughing voice. or see my mother's kindly face? Here in the trenches of the Somme, lying in the mud, the everlasting mud, my thoughts fly like the birds on wing, back to my home, to Little Hucklow's gentle calm. A young man still, nineteen summers I have had, yet old I feel with horrors I have seen, my comrades blown to pieces before my eyes, incessant gunfire in my ears, the stench of blood and worse is all around me. Yet through this horror my thoughts turn inward, Back to my home, to England, that fair and pleasant land, my home in Derbyshire, my sisters and brother. Will I ever hear the wind sough in the trees,as I lie in my bed at night, or will I lie in this foreign land, an unmarked grave, one of thousands? No name, just 'the unknown soldier', my nineteen summers come to nought, my home a far off place... This is a tribute to my dad, Benjamin Walter Wragg, who served in the First World war 1914-18. He went to war at seventeen years old. He did come home, wounded badly, but he survived and died aged 75 years. Elsie, international poet.