From This World to the Next: 1917

Ripped from shoulder to waist by villainous shrapnel

Lay the lad

In his own cooling pool of blood, pleading to be shot

Prayed the lad.

As I watched, Death absorbed him as many another

But not before his call of surprise and joy for ‘Mother!’

Cried the lad

As he understood she waited there, quite beyond us

Beyond us here in the rampaging terror of awful war.

God Bless, my lad.

(Inspired by a passage in Harry Patch’s ‘Last Fighting Tommy’; P94)