THEY WERE

They were boys going over the top to die

in their tens of thousands in the mud of the Somme.

Nazi youth best in the world bar none,

proved wrong over wide steppes of Mother Russia.

Hurricane pilots fighting Japan over Ceylon, Burma, Imphal,

lost pilots barely 21 made men in lonely cockpits.

Red Chinese boys laid bare bone bloody

against Yankee lines, human wave failure.

In the jungles of Nam stoned Americans kill

more yellow men and women, want their youth

back more time to do drugs without time taken up by killing.

Falklands calling, Malvinas battle boys to men

8,000 miles from home, for Britain left many behind last colonial war.

Desert combat, boys to men now highly skilled killers

for oil and the engine. Today, where will it be next?

War calling more boys to be men, to quietly die

in combat or call for their mothers.

Fate will tell – now we wonder.

Boys finish school, part of the lottery of death crying

for more soldiers and innocents to die in death.