'SALTASH, SEPTEMBER 1914': A NEW POEM...

Saltash, September 1914

Cornishmen depart via ferry chains

For Plymouth or Devonport;

Expeditionary,

Presumably light infantry,

A battalion, a force,

With no individual identity,

Hauled across the River Tamar;

Expectant, oblivious to the gravity

Of the War and its inevitable futility…

Cornishmen leave in army shackles

For France via south coast ports;

Military

Dragoons, the cavalry,

A company of horse;

On the slipway, mounted precariously,

As young men cross the Tamar,

Ebullient, oblivious to the atrocity

Of trench warfare and its catastrophic legacy…

Many would never again take that ferry,

Nor see the mists on Bodmin Moor;

Some would return to stormy seas and bury

Their memories of mud, shellshock and gore…

Many would never again take a breath,

Nor descend into the shaft of a working tin mine;

Some would escape a Western Front death,

Their memories and pain intolerable to define…

Pete Ray

September 2018

Amazing image of the Saltash Ferry in September 1914.

Men ferried to hell.

And in 1961, the ferry was finally relieved of its duty, due to the building of the Tamar Bridge alongside Brunel’s railway bridge…

I holidayed in Plymouth regularly as a child and recall queuing for that ferry for up to an hour sometimes…