To the memory of all who have fallen in war.
At the going down of the sun,
And in the morning …we will remember them
UNKNOWN SOLDIER
“Where have all the soldiers gone, ”
“Gone to graveyards everyone; ”
Peter Seeger’s sung melodies...
A grieving mother’s sad memories.
Our mother’s sons gone to war,
Repeated untold times before,
Gone to fight for kith and kin,
Each mother’s heart broken within.
Waiting for that ‘gram’ to arrive,
Your son is not coming home alive;
'Your son is missing presumed dead',
That is how those telegrams read.
Now buried deep, so far from home
Beneath some foreign turf and loam.
A Bayoneted rifle marks the hamlet,
Atop the butt, a mangled helmet,
No ‘dog tags’, neck laced identity,
An unmarked grave… for eternity.
Where is the sanity of it all,
Where is the sense of it all,
“When will we ever learn,
When… will we ever learn.”
Alf Hutchison