The Numerous Dead

I
The single symbol of loss and grief
 From the eye of a mother, a tear
That just-delivered telegram
 Bringing fulfilment to her fear
Lost;her only darling boy
 A son she held so dear
II
Forwards from the trench they spewed
 Some ran, some fell, some stumbled
The chatter of machine-guns filled
 The space where guns hadrumbled
The scream ofdeath assaulted ears
 And one by one they tumbled
Each man had come to 'do his duty'
 Never would he yield;
He came to fight, to live or die
 In thisfar-gone field
But in the hail of red-hot metal
All sense of duty reeled
The acrid stench of smoke and death
 Caused insides to knot
Soil and long-unburied dead
 Only furthered the reek of rot
Spindly shapes in the gloom
 One by one were shot
If the mother could watch the slaughter
 And chance to spot herson
She could not stop the deadly rain
 The bullets from each gun
Just afew could dodge that sound
The beating of Death's drum
Slowly they advanced across the mire
As the skyslowly paled
Bodies littered the pockmarked ground
 Men who'd tried, andfailed
Allfaces frozen in deathlycry
 By the smoke, were veiled
The feelingthat reached every heart
 Was a desperate sense ofdread
Across that innocent field of tears
 The dead and gone were spread
Each body lay, forever still
 Peppered with fatal lead
Khakhi shapes, mangled and torn
 Hung crumpled on thewire
And still the smack and crash of shells
 Filled the field with fire
A bog which sucked at legs and arms
And caused each limb to tire
The gunslaid their deadly load
 Along theline were splayed
Hundreds of empty shells of men
No longer so afraid
Their young and tender bodies had,
With lead and earth, been flayed
The atmosphere vibrated with
 Shells that whistled and crashed
On bodies and mud, in holes they fell
 In stagnant pools duds splashed
The rural idyll of Europehad,
 By war, been totally smashed
The burst and bang of each shell
 In stricken ears did roar
The crunch and splintered crack of bones
 Mingled with the gore
The mother'sson, onlymarked
 As a statistic of the war.

(Dedicated to those who foughton the Ypres salient,and along the rest of the Western Front,during the Great War.)