Harry Patch, the last soldier in the UK to serve in the trenches in WW1 died yesterday. He's no relation, but his passing made me think.
I remember get-togethers with the family back in the sixties when men who had fought in the war used to break out the tobacco and puff their way through tears for fallen friends. I was the oldest male child - all of 4 or 5, and I got plonked on a chair in the middle of them.
Officers and Men.
You were hittin' sixty
I was hittin' four
When you told me the stories
of the mates who went before.
Five thousand four hundred,
Yes, and eighty two
Friends fell in Picardy
Who'd marched there beside you.
They call them "Officers and Men."
but you just called them friends.
Now kids don't understand,
Even then I think you knew,
That I'd forget the names,
Forget the places too.
It's only now that you are gone
I piece it all together
From other peoples words,
Though it's you I remember.
At the battle on the Ancre
When you crossed as best you could
The stumps and blasted shell holes
That made up Thiepval Wood.
You made it through the chaos,
The screaming and the pain.
The Germans turned you back,
And you got sent right in again.
In the end they say your memory
Was as faded as fatigues
But you knew the names and places
Till the hour you were relieved.
