Written following the ceremony on November 11, 2013, a copy has been received by the Adjutant,

Wellington Barracks SW1.  The poem is especially relevant this year...the 100th anniversary of the

start of World War One - "the war to end all wars".  This version is included in a forthcoming CD

of my work called "Poetry To Please".  

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They stood beneath the Menin Gate

All gathered to commemorate

The engraved names and all their ghosts

Countless lines of long gone hosts.

 

The sacks of sacrificial soil

Collected by young children's toil

Were held out to be carried home

To where the dead could never roam.

 

Carefully placed upon the bier

A gun-carriage offered waiting near

Its horses quiet - as if t'were known

They had dead forebears of their own.

 

And when at last that holy train

Set out to journey back again

It seemed that countless voices cried

"We're going home across the tide".

 

Horseshoes rang on Belgian stone

Recalling those - known and unknown

Men and horses gone before

Remembered comrades lost to war.

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