Tommy's Wartime Memories

Old Tommy Owens O.B.E
Fought in the war they said
Came back to his hometown
With shrapnel in his head

I was in town the other day
And bumped into his wife
She said “Why not come for tea one day?
And ask Tommy about his life”

I told her that I knew
He used to own a hardware store
She said “I meant that you should ask him
About his life during the war”

A couple of days ago
I had some time to spare
I went to visit Tommy Owens
He was sat in an old armchair

He said “Do I know you?
What have you come here for?”
I told him I wanted to hear about
His memories of war

His wife brought me a cup of tea
And gently stroked her husband’s hand
Then said “If you don’t want to talk about it,
I'm sure she'll understand”

Tommy reached up and touched his shrapnel scar
And said “There isn’t much to tell,
But the best way to describe the war
Is it was a living hell”

He firstly told me about the food
Bread, Bully Beef and Biscuit
The latter he said could break a tooth
But if you were so hungry you would risk it

The flour shortage meant that bread
Was made with turnips dried and ground
And in the pea-soup cooked in Dixie’s
Horsemeat could be found

He used to trade tobacco
With his comrade Sam
For an ounce of coffee
Or a few ounces of cheese and jam

He told me that the food
Would be stored in petrol cans
And the lid of the Dixie cooking pot
Could be used as a frying pan

He and his comrades
Would be cock-a-hoop
When Sam would make Maconochie
Sliced carrot and turnip in a thin soup

Tommy told me of some soldiers
On the front-line that he knew
Were barely surviving on a ration
Of coffee, Oxo, porridge and stew

When the latrines needed emptying
He would give it a wide berth
He’d rather spend time filling sand bags
With shovelfuls of dirt and earth

He’d have a metal jerry-can
And a haversack with shaving-kit
Plus soap, towel, knife and fork
And other sundry things in it

He knew what the bayonet on his rifle was for
But he had other plans
Like using it to scrape mud off his boots
And opening tin-cans

Tommy and Sam would sometimes play cards
But Tommy found it hard to believe
That Sam winning nine games out of every ten
He didn’t have some cards up his sleeve

Down in the trenches
They would be overrun with rats
Tommy used to say they were
As big as the neighbours cat

I'm sipping on my tea
And Tommy says “Would you like to see my foot”?
He bends down and removes a sock
And three toes are kaput

He tells me that when he came home
He had a bad case of trench-foot
When his footwear was removed
Several toes were left inside his boot

His socks had grown into his foot
The worst case his doctor had ever seen
Caused by the unsanitary, cold and wet conditions
And resulting in gangrene

I sat in awe
of what I had been told
There are many lessons to be learned
From talking to the old

Tommy tells me before I leave
Some days he wishes he was dead
Because of the terrible mood-swings
Caused by the shrapnel in his head

I tell him that what he has told me
Has left me deeply moved
We have so much to learn from our elders
As my afternoon with Tommy has proved