Poem: No Man’s Land

    Grey, desolate, and bare of shrub or tree,

    Deep-holed and scarred by many a giant blow;

    A grave yard breath of rank mortality

    Hovers around in restless ebb and flow;

    Dim shapes the colour of the earth they cumber

    Lie motionless and silent, writhe and moan;

    Dismembered limbs, mixed with war’s other lumber,

    Weirdly entwined, across the waste are strewn.

    Such is this “No Man’s Land.” The light of day

    Brings in its train horrors no tongue can tell,

    Sights, scents and sounds that all the senses stun;

    And when night falls the will to rend and slay

    Creeps from its lair the hideous list to swell

    Of bodies rotting in the morrow’s sun.

F. J. Webb