War - Ww1 - Sweethearts Poem by Paul Warren

Wait for me I'll come back to you
Was his parting gift to her in promises too
He slung his kitbag on his shoulder
Wanting to forever just hold her
On their last day at the railway station
Then on a train to the port for embarkation

There would be no comradeship for her
Just lonely days waiting for the worst to occur
So she went back to her mother's home
And to work at the bakery in early hours known
Each day there was only routine for her to endure
Wondering if he would survive on the Fatal Shore

There were letters written in pencil sometimes
With thoughts on the battlefields in each line
Then one day there was a telegram from the army
With scant details filling in the blanks to stop the worry
He had been wounded and was lying in a Cairo hospital
With a wounded arm as his Lone Pine battle toll

He couldn't write so a nurse would do that for him
Whilst he was on the mend in the usual scheme
She worried that he would return a crippled man
Until the first letter he wrote in his own hand
It told her that he would return to his battalion
This time to Northern France in her contemplation

His letters kept coming and she wrote back
And deaths continued as a matter of fact
With her friends being visited by clergy men
For the worst news with their ANZAC's life at an end
This went on for three long years during the Great War
With her worrying about him as a never ending chore

One day another telegram arrived stating his whereabouts were unknown
He had gone over the top with his battalion disappearing without a showing
All chance of him returning diminished with each day without a word
The desperate hours of just waiting wondering what had occurred
She wrote letters to the army and the Red Cross about her lost loved one
The years went by with no more heard with her search for him undone.

© Paul Warren Poetry