Thiepval* by Micca
(May 2002)

Its Halloween** midnight in the low lands of Flanders
A cold pale fog on the land it is spread
And out of the mist, come a marching and singing
Long gaunt files of men near a hundred years dead

They stand, parade order, by the building at Thiepval
And at the command each steps up and stands tall
And receives in his turn from the ghost Colour Sergeant
His name rank and number removed from the wall

Their spectral Officer call the dismissal
And grey NCOS give each man his paybook
They salute and depart from the grim fields of Flanders
Without a glance sideways or a backward look

They march away and their singing is fading
But long before dawn their home places they've found
And finally back, after nearly a century
Each man with relief can sink into home ground

And all over Blighty*** their names are erasing
From column, memorial and empty tomb
The lost and the missing that have no known resting place
Returning to lie in their dark native womb

And now here at Thiepval there stands a cold monument
Blank and unmarked made of pale Portland stone
Because all the men it was made to memorial
Have all returned home, to sleep still with their own

"There's a long, long trail a winding into the land of my dreams
Where nightingales are singing and a pale moon gleams"


*Thiepval:  A monument to WW1 dead in Flanders on which the names, ranks and numbers of 75,026 men are inscribed who have no known resting place
**Halloween:  It is believed in some cultures that at Halloween, when the veil between the dead and the living worlds are thin, every 100 years those that met with sudden or violent death are allowed back to correct a wrong or right an injustice.
***Blighty: WW1 slang for Britain (or home) to "cop a Blighty", was to get wounded badly enough to be invalided home

Copyright M.A. Patterson, May 2002