TWO OF MY WORLD WAR 1 POEMS: DREAMING THE TRENCH AND JUST LIKE ME...

Dreaming The Trench

I see claws on rats.

Vicious, digging into the 

Handless forearm

Of an unsuspecting sentry

Whose body had disintegrated before me

Like a dream, forgotten in the morning.

He had been lighting a cigarette

When a shell illuminated

The horror, the spectacular,

The deafening murder,

Beneath a sergeant’s temporary canvas awning.

I see teeth on rats.

Vicious, digging into the

Clammy flesh

Of a bleeding forearm;

Bones splintered in mud before me,

Like wood shavings beneath my father’s plane.

I had been writing a lover’s letter

When the explosion rocked

The trench, the peace,

The rotting carnage,

Beneath the Belgian, drenching, persistent rain.

I see eyes on rats.

Vicious, digging into the

Oozing hole

Of my bleeding throat;

Wire tangled tight around me,

Like thorns of a nettle’s shroud.

I was remembering kisses

When the machine gun racked

The advance, the foolishness,

The incomprehensible suicide,

Beneath this weakening, beckoning, darkening cloud…

Pete Ray

MATERNAL GRANDFATHER (SEATED ON CHAIR, CENTRE).
SURVIVED THE WAR...

Just Like Me

Skidding feet went first,

Caked boots scraping upon stones,

Gouging at mud

And channelling through awful debris;

Then downwards over a ledge,

 Being propelled into a hole

With a thud…

Gripping with hands taut.

Stretcher sliding ‘neath snapped bones,

Spilling his blood

And scattering him in dreadful chaos;

Then silence, nerves on edge.

 Being shelled in the frightful hell

Of a flood…

And then I saw them:

Huns, thankfully dead;

Yet neither wore a brush

Upon a square-jawed head.

And neither was a weakling,

Blinking secretive eyes

Behind cartoon spectacles;

For to my surprise,

Both of them, conscripts
As far as I could see,

Were my age and my complexion

And might easily have been

Me…

Pete Ray

Just the thought of being a new recruit in World War I, bearing a stretcher, skidding like a baseball batter getting to a base, slithering into a shell-hole and spilling an injured man, but noticing two dead German soldiers. 

They were not as depicted in newspapers and propaganda but were actually just like me...

PATERNAL GRANDFATHER.
SURVIVED THE WAR...