1918

Last Sunday Lisa and I joined around seventy others at our local cenotaph here in Peniel Green to mark the 100^th anniversary of the end of the first World war.

It was an incredibly moving and emotional gathering and, perhaps rather fittingly, at the exact time of the two minutes silence it rained ever so softly. A bugler played “The Last Post”’ a piece of music that always gets me.

I’d watched a lot of good television leading up to the anniversary, particularly those including the voices of the “Tommies” who fought so bravely. However, Peter Jackson’s excellent “They Shall Not Grow Old” was a very hard thing to watch.  It pulled absolutely no punches and showed the full horrors of war in all its detail.  It was quite shocking.

What was equally shocking to me though was the thought that after going through what was absolute hell, we learned no lessons from it and to this very day bloody conflicts are fought across our planet.

My late father fought in the second World war.  He rarely spoke of it, and often said that were there another he would do everything in his power to stop me going to fight.  But I’ve no doubt that if called upon I would have gone.  Just like those brave men who went before and gave their lives, so we could live ours.

Now, I’m no poet.  In fact, I haven’t written one since junior school.  But I felt compelled to write something.  Here’s my effort:

Put your iPhone on silent

Turn your computer off

Forget about Netflix

Or your latest box set

You can get an Uber

To take you to work

Or just stay at home

Work from the internet

What worries do you have?

What’s stressing you out?

A deadline to make

Without breaking sweat

A century ago

Meant work in a trench

That’s a ditch full of mud

A barbed wire safety net

When the whistle blew

It didn’t mean go home

It maybe signalled your end

And terrified I bet

Your work mates fall

All around you is death

Will you be next

It’s a constant threat

And if you make it

Well, what have you made?

A pointless dash really

Through the blood, guts and wet

And tomorrow?

What will that bring?

More of the same probably

As your gains are just debt

It’s eleven o’clock now

And a hundred years have passed

Well, more or less

In case you forget

So put your iPhone on silent

Ignore your snapchat

Leave that last email

And pay your respect.