11th November 1918
In serried ranks they come to me:
Tom, Will, Harry, George, Bill, Alf
rows of squaddies heading south,
dust and dirt and gas and screams
hot metal designed to do its worst
tearing savagely at human flesh.
Lads from farms & factories
Lads from mills & mines
sacrificing their most precious time -
Jack Prince, a machine gunner
in the Cheshires, served right through,
from 28 Jul 1914 – 11 Nov 1918
he was returned to Blighty
only the once for treatment for a wound
he was quickly sent back to the front, the Somme,
where he ploughed on, kept his head down,
said nowt, concentrated on pauses in fire,
breaks in the bombardment, pauses in fear.
Knowing when to pause and hide, clear thinking
& luck, kept him alive long enough and eventually
he was to pass on to my mother
& I his hard won chance of life.
Thank you for my life granddad Jack.
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John Marks
Sun 12th Nov 2023 19:33
James Burford, collier and fitter, was the oldest soldier of all. When I first spoke to him in the trenches, he said: "Excuse me, sir, will you explain what this here arrangement is on the side of my rifle?" "That's the safety catch. Didn't you do a musketry-course at the depôt?" "No, sir, I was a re-enlisted man, and I spent only a fortnight there. The old Lee-Metford didn't have no safety-catch." I asked him when he had last fired a rifle. "In Egypt in 1882," he said. "Weren't you in the South African War?" "I tried to re-enlist, but they told me I was too old, sir... My real age is sixty-three." Robert Graves, 'Goodbye to all that'