I was standing with Les and Carys listening to the pompiers playing the Last Post at the Menin Gate in Ieper/ Ypres just two weeks ago today....

MENIN GATE (Les Sullivan, Nov 99)

I see you reading names carved in stone
Each one a man with a tale of his own
You came to Ieper with your friends for fun
I came with mine but I carried a gun
        
        Ch/I was a sailor barely nineteen
        I fell so far from the sea
        They play their bugles each night at eight
        For people like me at the old Menin Gate

We joined the navy to fight on the sea
Parfitt and Sawdy young Dave Tee and me
Funny to think that the one ship we saw
Brought us to Belgium to die in the war

Everywhere water, rain, mud and clay
One great explosion in water I lay
There in the shell-hole that's where I drowned
And to this day, well I've never been found

Laugh with your friends as you travel this land
Read our four names perhaps you'll understand
Out in the fields there's an old shattered tree
And Parfitt and Sawdy, young Dave Tee and me


Kitty