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| The Black Rose |
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- They met when the soldiers assembled with
kitbag and cordite, and wore
- The khakis, the brass and the bayonets and
the cerebral trappings of war
- They were crack shots and rode like the
devil with a humour that rattled like Morse
- As Infantry mounted and tempered to
mateship, slouch hat and the horse.
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- They firmed up their friendship in
training, their mateship was sealed on the Front
- 'Mid deadly cross-fire and septic pariah
and the brutal constraints of the "the stunt"
- The battle had raged and consumed them, the
fighting intense in their zone
- That night to the tents came a warhorse,
Ben's blood splattered "Ajax", alone.
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- And Tom to the C.O. petitioned. The captain
he listened and said
- "That sector's baptised son, and
christened, and consigned to the dying and dead."
- "And soldier, permission is censured,
I can't spare another young life",
- "Deny me a further slim Scripture
filed under 'Letters to Wife'."
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- Tom snapped his heels and saluted,
"I'm sorry Sir, I've just got to go".
- And the captain remembered a mission on a
bleak veldt a lifetime ago.
- A certain sad smile claimed the captain as
the lantern light bled from the fray
- He wished Tom a speedy recovery, with his
blessings Pip cantered away.
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- The moon checker flecked on the corpses and
mottled the bronzed armaments
- All twisted and still and distorted and
smelted in grim monuments
- Soon faces presented familiar, then changed
into faces of friends
- Tom's heart stopped for ages the second he
found the pale face that was Ben's.
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- He felt through Ben's greatcoat and
stiffened then hauled his mate's weight on Pip's back
- And the enemy sensed in that moment, two
heroes at work on the track
- Tom entered the tent of the captain and
eased the dead body to ground
- A general and staff were assembled and
acknowledged the moment profound.
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- And the captain he offered condolence and
tendered a solemn refrain
- On the noble bequeath of the rescue and
Tom's action that ended in vain
- "In vain, Sir?" intoned the young
soldier. His statement slit canvas and corps
- And washed out amoungst the stark faces and
the trenches that led to the war.
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- "Ben was alive when I found him. His
gallant heart stopped on the way,"
- "And in your note home to his Mum Sir,
there"s some things I'd like you to say,"
- "Tell her his last thoughts were with
her, that Tom Turner will bury her son,"
- "And tell her his last words to me
Sir, were ... 'Mate, I just knew that you'd come'."
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© Robert Raftery, PictureWriter
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