In The Trenches Poem by Angela Wybrow

In these treacherous trenches, many hours we spend:
It's enough to send anyone right round the bend.
In this thick, gloopy mud, we're almost knee-deep,
Feeling pretty exhausted due to a real lack of sleep.

As well as the rats and the millions of flies,
You couldn't imagine the things I've seen with these eyes;
I've seen such horrors: much death and despair,
And it's much more than my mind feels able to bear.

I long for sweet dreams and a warm, cosy bed,
But all I have are these nightmares trapped in my head.
The stench of the dead has tarnished my soul:
It makes me feel sick and my warm blood run cold.

I really do wish that war would soon end:
Only yesterday morning, I lost a good friend;
Of Jimmy McGinty, I was really quite fond,
And I'm finding it hard to accept that he's gone.

Every day, many men are wounded or killed:
Cut down in their prime in a far, foreign field.
Who can tell, who amongst us will survive:
If a single one of us will make it back alive.

What's coming our way, there's really no telling,
With heavy machine gun fire and the constant shelling;
Shells have been falling like summertime rain,
Causing death and destruction and unbearable pain.

We sometimes struggle to keep up morale,
When faced with conditions so dire and foul.
The weather's been awful - it's been raining all day,
But we'll keep a brave face and our foes we will slay.

We'll keep on fighting and we won't give in;
We'll keep on fighting until the day that we win.
They say this is the war that will end them all,
So, we'll keep on fighting until the enemy falls.