I marched where banners once unfurled beneath the lion’s roar and flame,
From desert dune to jungle mist, the crown and creed I bore the same.
With bayonet and bitter shoe, I fought where empire drew her line,
But now I queue for crusts and pills, while strangers feast on plate and wine.
The crescent gleams where cross once stood, in chapels turned to sleeping halls,
And men who knelt at Canterbury now paint over her crumbling walls.
For us who bled in countless wars, there’s no warm hearth or state-bestowed grace,
But new-come throngs are housed and fed, and smiled upon in every place.
My medals rust in drawer’s unseen, my spine is bent with duty’s toll,
And none recall the frozen nights when I held fast our island soul.
The generals speak in gala tongues; the ministers their treaties write,
Yet none spare coin nor kindly word for those who bore the brunt of fight.
The legions stand, aye, thousand’s strong, but go with empty hands and eyes,
Their youth spent like a flickering lamp beneath the grey of foreign skies.
No honour guards our final sleep, no bugle sends us down the years,
Just poppy wreaths on windy days and speeches drowned in clapping ears.
Is this the cost of empire’s pride? A cloak of frost for all we gave?
The hearth gone cold, the flag half-mast, no place for lions once so brave.
They honour those who did not serve, whose faith is not this soil’s nor crown,
But I, a son of England’s wrath, must fade alone and lay me down.
(By John Shenton)