Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Canada Today is Remembrance Day

Lest We Forget



Tattered Hill

The dawn came slowly and they wondered,
How loud the guns,
Non-stop they thundered,
To spit upon the mob encumbered,
Who chanced to pass that way.

And of the men,
Whose fate would fly there.
Of the ones,
Who did not die there.
Of the crazed,
That cursed and cried there,
Came the trumpet's call.

To die! To die!
Alone in rotten mud.
To die! To die!
In a thick and frowzy flood.
That surrounded all whose feet did step,
Upon the heaped, collective mess.
To die!

No smiles amongst the pungent throng.
No time to cast goodwill around.
The ones that stuck,
Propped up in muck,
They'd die, but would not fall!

Surreal,
To feel the devil's sting,
That struck, infecting everything.
And those that still continued breathing,
And the corpses that the mud kept heaving,
Would have no rest.
And when the day used up the sun,
The darkness came,
And swallowed up the ones,
That death had left behind!

Bastard Reaper!
The men that suffered on condemned,
Knew that you had not arrived for them.
Because the devil called your name,
Instructing you to leave the sods that,
Screamed to die,
But screamed to die in vain!

And finally when the coffle throng,
Upon the stale, black mud sat down,
To count the ones who soldiered on,
Remorse!

How long does hell go on?

And why does the devil craft the things,
That God and man
Would seek to squall upon?

Alas, the souls who screamed and weeped,
Would wait 'til dawn,
In hopes that they might sleep.

Envelope me, oh numbing shroud,
The voices call for death!

- Stephen Redgwell, 2005