Inspired by photographs and writings about World War 1, and the faces of old men marching in the Remembrance Day parades

The stark landscape gave no clue to the horrors endured;
amid the mud, like arms out of quicksand,
only a few stumps held their ground,
refusing to be uprooted in
one man's annihilation of another.
Desolate.
In it's very bleakness
the sorrow of the world;
young souls borne forever
on the wind,
bodies grotesquely lain
in death, where they fell.
Bullets.
Choking gas.
The screams of the dying mingled
with those of the afraid.
Men, far from loved ones,
suffering in the mud of
a thousand trenches,
miles from home.
Fighting a foe in a foreign land,
shedding their blood,
blindly obeying the orders
that harried them to oblivion.
Those who came back were forever changed,
they had seen hell
and lived to tell the tale.
Behind their medals
are the visions of which
nightmares covet,
young men once
turned old by war,
now old by years.