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Contribution from Rene Dee |  |
| Children of the Foxes Path | ||
| They came from far and wide - | ||
| young boys in their prime - | ||
| as their fathers and grandfathers | ||
| had come before, | ||
| seeking a place in history | ||
| with fife and drum and duty bound. | ||
| Tonfanau Halt, twixt sea and Foxes Path | ||
| was the start and end of their journey, | ||
| where canny Scot met West Country crew | ||
| and Ulster lilt sang with the Geordie few | ||
| and the Cockney lad scoffed at the Scouser's brew | ||
| but once past the gate, the language turned blue. | ||
| This Camp; condemned by others long before | ||
| when shells still fell on hallowed ground, | ||
| lay yet to prepare for war; to carry flags to the end | ||
| imbued by discipline so severe | ||
| that drove to cut off toe or to puncture ear, | ||
| as boy soldiers learnt what there was to fear. | ||
| Armed with green Ponchos and ill-fitting boots | ||
| Cader Idris and the Plynlimon hills were assaulted. | ||
| Hell and high water was repelled, at a cost | ||
| when the blood from ones eyelets started seeping | ||
| and as skin became blue from the freezing - | ||
| and where sheep, ever present, kept on bleating. | ||
| Inside the billets nightly stories regaled, | ||
| warmed by the stoves of Satan himself. | ||
| Boys played with bayonets like darts on a board, | ||
| the 'Bull' always there, never ignored | ||
| with spit and polish like broken record | ||
| trashed in the morning: Sergeant had scored! | ||
| Until that final moment, so surreal and sublime, | ||
| on a Parade Ground of cold and steel, | ||
| when boys became men at the going down of the sun | ||
| to the bugle's Last Post and a life yet to come, | ||
| as the train sped away to new lands so far flung | ||
| that could end like the fox, at the end of a gun. | ||
| Brighton 12 November 2003. | ||
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