Contribution from Rene Dee | ||
Children of the Foxes Path | ||
They came from far and wide - | ||
young boys in their prime - | ||
as their fathers and grandfathers | ||
had come before, | ||
seeking a place in history | ||
with fife and drum and duty bound. | ||
Tonfanau Halt, twixt sea and Foxes Path | ||
was the start and end of their journey, | ||
where canny Scot met West Country crew | ||
and Ulster lilt sang with the Geordie few | ||
and the Cockney lad scoffed at the Scouser's brew | ||
but once past the gate, the language turned blue. | ||
This Camp; condemned by others long before | ||
when shells still fell on hallowed ground, | ||
lay yet to prepare for war; to carry flags to the end | ||
imbued by discipline so severe | ||
that drove to cut off toe or to puncture ear, | ||
as boy soldiers learnt what there was to fear. | ||
Armed with green Ponchos and ill-fitting boots | ||
Cader Idris and the Plynlimon hills were assaulted. | ||
Hell and high water was repelled, at a cost | ||
when the blood from ones eyelets started seeping | ||
and as skin became blue from the freezing - | ||
and where sheep, ever present, kept on bleating. | ||
Inside the billets nightly stories regaled, | ||
warmed by the stoves of Satan himself. | ||
Boys played with bayonets like darts on a board, | ||
the 'Bull' always there, never ignored | ||
with spit and polish like broken record | ||
trashed in the morning: Sergeant had scored! | ||
Until that final moment, so surreal and sublime, | ||
on a Parade Ground of cold and steel, | ||
when boys became men at the going down of the sun | ||
to the bugle's Last Post and a life yet to come, | ||
as the train sped away to new lands so far flung | ||
that could end like the fox, at the end of a gun. | ||
Brighton 12 November 2003. |
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