Poems: | Listen to Your Manager | Your Smile | On the Beach at New Quay | Banana | While Waiting |
Boy at the Somme |
Stories: | Dream Team | The Dog Who Cried Custard | Bags of Inspiration | Time Flies |
Little Devil |
Boy at the Somme
"The last one there is a cow pat!"
grinned the small boy
running between the white headstones
as he began the one hundred metre dash
along the narrow strip of turf separating
Private Tom Atkins, age 18, of the Lancashire Fusiliers,
from Lieutenant Edward Hollis, age 19,
of the Seaforth Highlanders;
more than twice the distance they managed
over the same small field
that October morning eighty-seven years before
into the spitting venom of the machine guns
that killed them instantly.