Sandbags

Sandbags.

 

Grandpa, tell me a story.

The tales you could recount 

Like when you were a soldier. 

For years you blocked them out. 

 

I’d love to hear your yarns, about the sorrow and the joy.

They sent you to the frontline. 

When you were just a boy.

 

All your pals were going. 

Their first time overseas. 

They would all come home to terraced streets 

Men,celebrities.

 

They said it would be over, 

by Christmas time at latest.

Of all the soldiers in the Empire. 

The British are the greatest. 

 

You did your basic training 

You drank the bar room dry. 

When you shot a sandbag. 

You never heard that cry!

 

You never realised , when you raised the sights

Your target was a boy like you, crying in the night.

 

Screaming for his Mother.In violent decay.

Longing for his home, so many miles away.

Instead he would become entombed in putrefying gloop.

Absorbed into the quagmire. 

Satan’s gourmet soup.

 

Grandpa ,tell us once again,

 about what you’re comrades said,Those evil sandbag enemies

Abandoned, tortured, dead.

 

How killing was for soldiers, with medals on their chests. 

Once they heard the sandbags scream, nobody could rest.

 

The sound of  sandbags wailing ,never ever wained .

They killed for King and Country 

In killing they were trained.

 

The hollow shrill of sandbags pierced with bayonets and knives.. 

Pursued them in their nightmares disturbed them all their lives.

 

And when they met their maker.

How would they convey?

That slaughter was not murder.

With sandbags far away.

 

That all was fair in love and war, when you took the shilling.

Just sandbags in the darkness, that's all that they were killing.

 

But in the heat of battle, no time to contemplate. 

In conflict with the enemy, whom we were told to hate.

Deep within our nightmares, we could not understand . 

How sandbags oozed with blood, and lives were turned to sand .