POPPY’S POEM

For my father Bill Baine, 1899-1968

#535068, 1/15th Battalion, London Regiment, WW1

‘What passing-bells for those who die as cattle?

Only the monstrous anger of the guns.’

And so some lines to spike centenary prattle:

These words a sole survivor soldier’s son’s.

My father Bill, born in Victorian England:

The sixth of January, 1899.

His stock, loyal London. Proletarian doff-cap.

Aged just eighteen, he went to join the line.

Not in a war to end all wars forever

But in a ghastly slaughter at the Somme -

A pointless feud, a royal family squabble

Fought by their proxy poor with gun and bomb.

My father saved. Pyrexia, unknown origin.

Front line battalion: he lay sick in bed.

His comrades formed their line, then came the whistle

And then the news that every one was dead.

In later life a polished comic poet

No words to us expressed that awful fear

Although we knew such things were not forgotten.

He dreamed Sassoon: he wrote Belloc and Lear.

When I was ten he died, but I remember,

Although just once, he’d hinted at the truth.

He put down Henry King and Jabberwocky

And read me Owen’s ‘Anthem For Doomed Youth’.

‘What passing-bells for those who die as cattle?

Only the monstrous anger of the guns.’

And so some lines to spike Gove’s mindless prattle:

These words a sole survivor soldier’s son’s.

21/2/2014