War Game Poem by Phil Soar

'Don't shoot till you see the whites of their eyes'
our leader would shout from the trench
'But sarge, won't that mean they're a little too close'
as the cheeks in my backside would clench

He would shout his instructions from a safe point of view
which made all us soldiers unclear
if insurgents were targeting us from the front
or were creeping on us from the rear

It gave us a limited time to decide
if we wanted to make a retreat
our leader seemed happy to stay where he was
and not even rise to his feet

Either he was an expert at war games
who had weighed up the chance of attack
and decided we needed to see in their eyes
if the likelihood was they'd come back

So we waited for what seemed like ages
and lay in the field full of clover
it was over a year before we saw a soul
no-one told him that the war was over!