Written In Flanders (2 Poems) 2014 Poem by Sheena Blackhall

White Feathers

White feathers are worn by doves, by angels, by swans
Women gave them to men they branded cowards
(In a cock fight, pure-bred fighters showed no white)

Private Ernest Atkins, on leave from the Western Front.
Was riding a tram when the girl beside him
Turned to give him the feather
He smacked her across the face with his pay book
Said: 'Thanks, I'll take it back
To the boys at Passchendaele. I'm only in civvies
Because folk think my uniform's lousy
But it's not half as lousy, girl, as you."



Touring Flanders,2014, read & overheard on board the bus

I've got an attic with a dormer window
Not a mansion but it suits us both

Officers slept in dug outs, men made do
With 'funk holes' dug in the side of the trench.
They slept under overcoats along with the lice and rats

Those continental breakfasts give me piles

Lice caused Trench Fever, took three months to cure.
Red slugs oozed from mud and rotting flesh
Corpse rats ate bodies, peed out Weil's disease

Frank couldn't understand a word they said
They call that English? Not the kind we speak!
And what a stink came off that farmer's midden!

Mustard gas was oily, blistered skin
That festered, causing horrid mutilation

Listen campers, we're not Johnny Foreigner
We'll let them know we'll all be eating early

Phosgene gas was said to smell like hay
The victim died by choking on his tongue

Did you know we've got a reptilian tongue?
It's true, the way we actually taste water

400,000 Tommies caught VD
The Belgians say that all the whores were French

Our country's morals have gone down the pan
Those single mums…kids who don't know their father

The winter of ‘16 saw a flour shortage.
Trench food could be pea-soup with horse-meat chunks.
Weeds, nettles, leaves would whip up stews.

Someone raided my veggie plot last week

Irritant gas is colourless, poisons the blood
Men breathe it. Vomit, cough, and quickly die

Our hotel bedroom stinks of cigar smoke
I'm going to complain, demand a refund

The catering staff put food in cooking pots
In petrol cans, old jam jars to send out.
But when it reached the front it was stone cold.
I always tell the grandkids ‘clean your plate'
I ate the widow's mite, asparagus

Chlorine gas was yellow-green in colour
It smelt like bleach, attacking lungs and nose
A million men on both sides died by gassing

She had a workman in to clear the drains
Clogged up with fat from all those greasy fries

Flanders was flooded in 1917
The wettest weather on record for 70 years

I've my umbrella here…it's spitting rain
Look at those farms! So rich!
Subsidized from all us mugs in Britain

La Basse Cour in Belgium, an attractive farm
Set in acres on the Messines Ridge
The problem lies with an unexploded bomb
Still there,80 feet beneath the farm,
Potential for redevelopment might cover it.
Farmers reap an iron harvest still
Mines, mortars, shells and skeletons of course

Oo look at all those cyclists in their lycra
Help for Heroes. Oh, the thighs on them!

Trench Foot was caused by filthy, damp conditions.
Untreated, it can lead to amputation
20,000 British Army soldiers suffered
With trench foot in the winter of '14.

They should settle every war by a game of football
But Germany would win on penalties

To pass the time in the trenches, men killed lice
Running a candle flame across cloth seams

I've just been here two days. Ten mozzie bites!
Martin's bought a Saab, and with the top down
Whoosh…you really feel the turbulence

British tanks had genders, male and female
Male tanks had cannon, females had machine guns

The policeman slapped her wrist, said ‘Get off home dear'

Russian women joined ‘The Legion of Death'
They captured over 100 German soldiers

His hands got impetigo with the filth
His legs were chaffed red raw with soiled puttees

The average service time of a British pilot
In ww1? Eleven days at the front.
More than half were killed whilst still in training.
Many were in their teens. A strange existence
By day, they lived in chateaux, playing croquet,
Swimming in beautiful pools and eating well
Then off, to do the most dangerous job on the Front.

My sister's got a villa outside Paphos
We thought, ‘This year we'll do the War instead.'

The French slang for a soldier was ‘le poilu'
(The hairy one) .8 million of them died

In England, you go 3 miles down the road
Then accents change. Don't start me on the Irish!

A duck pond leads to Lone Tree Cemetery.
These are graves of the Royal Irish Rifles,
Many killed when the Allies blew a mine
Buried alive in rubble…friendly fire

Two Spanish women shared our breakfast table
And never said ‘Excuse me'. What a cheek!
And by the way, the Belgians can't do tea
It tastes like mud. I'd rather have a latte

Fritz Haber researched mustard gas, that killer.
His wife, with his service pistol, shot herself

My father cycled every day to the bank
Wearing his bowler hat. He was a trooper!
I'm not a twitcher, but I do like birds

100,000 pigeons flew in the war
If you wounded a homing pigeons …6 months jail!

Back home they're taking over. It's a disgrace
Our jobs, our schools, they drain our social service

Belgium was occupied for four long years
Bridges were blown. Roads blocked. Land, women, raped.
Folk killed, displaced, whole towns turned refugee
Belgian civilians used as slaves in camps
The usual weary list of atrocities

We know for sure that our village of Overijse,
Was liberated by Scottish troops at the end,
Gordons, who fought in the village of Rosières?