Joseph

I should have had a great uncle

Joseph was his name

He wasn’t anyone famous

or had any special claim

He was just another soldier

in a great and bloody war

A number on a list somewhere

A gentle man before

Derbyshire born and village bred

He knew the simple life

but his life was taken from us

before he could take a wife

At 18 he went to war

to make the whole world safe

He was cannon fodder like the rest

and died from German strafe

His body lies in Flanders Fields

although we know not where

With thousands of his comrades

A giant grave they share

We see his name at the Menin Gate

At leper, so far away

and at 8 o’clock each evening

we hear the bugles play

I never met my uncle Joe

He died before I came

but I will not forget him

even though he’s just a name

To all those souls who perished

in a war we all condemn

The very least that we can do

is to remember them

“We will remember them”

Dedicated to all those who died in WW1

1914 – 1918

“The Great War”

“The War To End All War’s”

Two years after its end, when every corpse or human fragment that could be found was laid to rest, founder of the War Graves Commission Sir Fabian Ware calculated that if the dead could march side by side in continuous procession down Whitehall, it would take them four days and nights to get past the saluting base.

ãEvad Repooc 2005