War And Remembrance - Ww1 - Hellfire Corner Poem by Paul Warren

There's a roundabout with green fields in peacetime mode
The traffic slows in front and we turn up the Menin Road
We will be soon in Ieper for our overnight stay
The Great War now is a hundred years away

If it was a hundred years now past in time
The scene on Hellfire corner would be not so fine
There would be hessian screens to hide
The Allied soldiers as they marched side by side

The German gunners had long before
Zeroed the intersection in to bombard it even more
So the troops moving this way hurried past
By a place of broken detritus by the hessian masts

Charles Bean described it as a place perpetually shelled
A reputation during the Great War as a place never healed
Perhaps those lost in the broken years wait on the roadside
Looking to complete their journeys started long ago in pride.

© Paul Warren Poetry