Fight the Good Fight 2: First World War Postcard…
Pallid, seeking, moonlit face
Lifting to reveal
A trusting expression, yet an incongruous appeal,
Beside an officers’ dugout;
Wardrobe unruffled, unnaturally trim,
Hands caressing a bible with inquisitive grace.
Yet barbed-wire entanglements,
Shrapnel, blinding artillery,
Poison-gas and bayonet-steel
Would break the rules of war, accepted,
To pour scorn upon running a straight race,
So that the doomed infantryman, conscripted,
Forced to walk into a path of hell
And into the filth of a grave-like shell-hole, dies,
Unlikely to have considered Christ his prize…
Pete Ray
February 2018
The second Bamforth postcard referring to the hymn ‘Fight the Good Fight’, published in Holmfirth…
Just my thoughts about a terrible conflict, reflected in the propaganda expected to aid the war effort…
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