Getting flashbacks from my GCSE English class here.

High Flight
Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds - and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of - wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.
Up, up the long delirious, burning blue,
I've topped the windswept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or even eagle flew -
And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod
The high untresspassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand and touched the face of God.

Pilot Officer John Gillespie Magee
No 412 squadron, RCAF
Killed 11 December 1941

We crabs love this one. Absolutely screams Spitfire at the reader. Admittedly you AAC types out there might have a problem identifying with it, what with being stuck below the cloud base, dodging trees and rattling along in your Lynx at 120kts and all that.

I do not know your name, but I know you died
I do not know from where you came, but I know you died

Your uniform, branch of service, it matters not to me
Whether Volunteer or Conscript, or how it came to be
That politicians failures, or some power-mad ambition
Brought you too soon to your death, in the name of any nation

You saw, you felt, you knew full well, as friend and foe were taken
By bloody death, that your life too, was forfeit and forsaken
Yet on you went and fought and died, in your close and private hell
For Mate or Pal or Regiment and memories never to tell

It was for each other, through shot and shell, the madness you endured
Side by side, through wound and pain, and comradeship assured
No family ties, or bloodline link, could match that bond of friend
Who shared the horror and kept on going, at last until the end

We cannot know, we were not there, it's beyond our comprehension
To know the toll that battle brings, of resolute intention
To carry on, day by day, for all you loved and hoped for
To live in peace a happy life, away from bloody war

For far too many, no long life ahead, free of struggle and pain and the gun
And we must remember the price that was paid, by each and every one
Regardless of views, opinions aside, no matter how each of us sees it
They were there and I cannot forget, even though I did not live it

I do not know your name, but I know you died
I do not know from where you came, but I know you died.

Kenny Martin

And

So you were David's father
And he was your only son,
And the new-cut peats are rotting
And the work is left undone,
Because of an old man weeping,
Just an old man in pain,
For David, his son David,
That will not come again.

Oh, the letters he wrote you
And I can see them still,
Not a word of the fighting
But just the sheep on the hill
And how you should get the crops in
Ere the year got stormier,
And the Bosches have got his body,
And I was his officer.

You were only David's father,
But I had fifty sons
When we went up in the evening
Under the arch of the guns,
And when we came back at twilight-
O God! I heard them call
To me for help and pity
That could not help at all.

Oh, never will I forget you,
My men that trusted me,
More my sons than your fathers',
For they could only see
The little helpless babies
And the young men in their pride.
They could not see you dying,
And hold you while you died.

Happy and young and gallant,
They saw their first-born go,
But not the strong limbs broken
And the beautiful men brought low,
The piteous writhing bodies,
They screamed 'Don't leave me, sir,'
For they were only your fathers
But I was your officer.

Thanks to whoever posted 'The Last of the Light Brigade'. I haven't read it before; powerful stuff. I have a book of Kiplings poems, but that's not in it.

I did a Google for it since I thought you may have made an error about the author. You hadn't but I did find that Kipling had added another verse.

An extra verse by Kipling published in the St. James’s Gazette of 28 April, 1890. (This was not collected in Kipling's Inclusive Verse or the Sussex or Burwash editions.)


They sent a cheque to the felon that sprang from an Irish bog,
They healed the spavined cab-horse; they housed the homeless dog.
And they sent (you may call me a liar) when rebel and beast were paid,
A cheque for – enough to live on , to the last of the Light Brigade.


As true today as it was then.

A E Housmans' "Epitaph on an Army of Mercenaries"

These, in the day when heaven was falling
The hour when earth's foundations fled,
Followed their mercenary calling,
And took their wages, and are dead.

Their shoulders held the sky suspended;
They stood, and earth's foundations stay;
What God abandoned, these defended,
And saved the sum of things for pay.

This was replied to by Hugh McDiarmid who has a different take

It is a God-damned lie to say that these
Saved, or knew, anything worth any man's pride.
They were professional murderers and they took
Their blood money and their imperious risks and died.
In spite of all their kind some elements of worth
With difficulty persist and and there on earth.

THESE, in the day when heaven was falling
The hour when earth's foundations fled,
Followed their mercenary calling,
And took their wages, and are dead.

Their shoulders held the sky suspended;
They stood, and earth's foundations stay;
What God abandoned, these defended,
And saved the sum of things for pay.

A E Housman

Originally Posted by Basho

"Summer grasses
all that is left of the dreams of soldiers."

Basho is just a great name, but if this is on an earlier page, apologies.
I went hunting for it on the web, and found Fergal Keane quoting it on the BBC news website, 4 days before the 2nd War Against Mr Hussein kicked off.

Originally Posted by Fergal Keane

The words of a long-dead Japanese poet might seem an unusual choice to begin a reflection on the coming war against Iraq.

But I feel the words of the great poet of the Samurai era - Basho - are more than usually apposite this morning.

Basho was travelling in the Japanese interior when he came across an old battlefield and paused to contemplate the rusting debris before him.

There were helmets, shields and swords. The bones of the dead had long ago gone into the earth.

Those who had seen war before understood how strange and terrible could be the road from this moment in Kuwait to a place of explosions and burning and death
Wild grasses now covered the remnants of the struggle.

Looking on this Basho wrote the following short poem or Haiku:

Bit of a cheat because it's a song lyric . . .

Here's forty shillings on the drum for those who volunteer to come
To 'list and fight the foe today - Over the hills and far away

O'er the hills and o'er the main, Through Flanders Portugal and Spain
King George commands and we obey - Over the hills and far away

When duty calls me I must go, to stand and face another foe
But part of me will always stray - Over the Hills and far away

O'er the hills and o'er the main, Through Flanders Portugal and Spain
King George commands and we obey - Over the hills and far away

If I should fall to rise no more, as many comrades did before
Then ask the fifes and drums to play - Over the hills and far away

O'er the hills and o'er the main, Through Flanders Portugal and Spain
King George commands and we obey - Over the hills and far away

The fall in lads behind the drum. With colours blazing like the sun
Along the road to come what may - Over the hills and far away

O'er the hills and o'er the main, Through Flanders Portugal and Spain
King George commands and we obey - Over the hills and far away

and another song. I think this song is an attack on the NI paramilitaries of both sides, and not a go at the Army. If I'm wrong, you'd better let me know quickly!


I could be a soldier
Go out there and fight to save this land
Be a people's soldier
Paramilitary gun in hand
I won't be no soldier
I won't take no orders from no-one
Stuff their fcuking armies
Killing isn't my idea of fun

[Chorus]
They wanna waste my life
They wanna waste my time
They wanna waste my life
And they've stolen it away

I could be a hero
Live and die for their 'important' cause
A united nation
Or an independent state with laws
And rules and regulations
That merely cause disturbances and wars
That is what I've got now
All thanks to the freedom-seeking hordes

[Chorus]

I'm not gonna be taken in
They said if I don't join I just can't win
I've heard that story many times before
And every time I threw it out the door

Still they come up to me
With a different name but the same old face
I can see the connection
With another time and a different place
They ain't blonde-haired or blue-eyed
But they think that they're the master race
They're nothing but blind fascists
Brought up to hate and given lives to waste

Don't know if this one has been on before but found it on the net.

By Thomas Hardy:

The Man He Killed

"Had he and I but met
By some old ancient inn,
We should have sat us down to wet
Right many a nipperkin!

"But ranged as infantry,
And staring face to face,
I shot at him and he at me,
And killed him in his place.

"I shot him dead because –
Because he was my foe,
Just so – my foe of course he was;
That's clear enough; although

"He thought he'd 'list perhaps,
Off-hand like – just as I –
Was out of work – had sold his traps –
No other reason why.

"Yes; quaint and curious war is!
You shoot a fellow down
You'd treat if met where any bar is,
Or help to half-a-crown."