By Siegfried Sassoon To these I turn, in these I trust;Brother Lead and Sister Steel.To his blind power I make appeal;I guard her beauty clean from rust.He spins and burns and loves the air,And splits a skull to win my praise;But up the nobly marching daysShe glitters naked, cold and fair.Sweet Sister, grant your soldier…
The British grave of The Unknown Warrior (often known as ‘The Tomb of The Unknown Warrior’) holds an unidentified British soldier killed on a European battlefield during the First World War. He was buried in Westminster Abbey, London on 11 November 1920, simultaneously with a similar interment of a French unknown soldier at the Arc…
by Wilfred Owen What passing-bells for these who die as cattle? – Only the monstrous anger of the guns. Only the stuttering rifles’ rapid rattle Can patter out their hasty orisons. No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells; Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs, – The shrill, demented choirs of wailing…
By Issac Rosenberg The darkness crumbles away.It is the same old druid Time as ever,Only a live thing leaps my hand,A queer sardonic rat,As I pull the parapet’s poppyTo stick behind my ear.Droll rat, they would shoot you if they knewYour cosmopolitan sympathies.Now you have touched this English handYou will do the same to a…
By Wilfred Owen Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,Till on the haunting flares we turned our backsAnd towards our distant rest began to trudge.Men marched asleep. Many had lost their bootsBut limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hootsOf tired,…
William Henry III, (Willem Hendrik in Dutch) Prince of Orange was born on 4th November 1650. A Dutchman by birth, part of the House of Orange, he would later reign as King of England, Scotland and Ireland until his death in 1702. William’s reign came at a precarious time in Europe when religious divide dominated…
By Ivor Gurney Suddenly into the still air burst thudding And thudding, and cold fear possessed me all, On the gray slopes there, where Winter in sullen brooding Hung between height and depth of the ugly fall Of Heaven to earth; and the thudding was illness’ own. But still a hope I kept that were…
by Rudyard Kipling “Have you news of my boy Jack?” Not this tide. “When d’you think that he’ll come back?” Not with this wind blowing, and this tide. “Has any one else had word of him?” Not this tide. For what is sunk will hardly swim, Not with this wind blowing, and this tide. “Oh,…
The grave of the Unknown Warrior in Westminster Abbey contains the remains of an unidentified British serviceman who was interred in 1920 as a way of honouring the fallen of the First World War. The selection of the Unknown Warrior was a secretive event and remains shrouded in mystery to this day. Here curator of…
Red poppies have been worn as a show of support for the Armed Forces community since the Royal British Legion’s formation in 1921. The idea originates from a poem, ‘In Flanders Fields’ by Canadian Doctor, Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae when, shortly after losing a friend in Ypres in 1915, he was inspired by the sight…
