'THE POCKET WATCH': A NEW POEM ABOUT WORLD WAR ONE...

The Pocket Watch

In truth there was much low cloud,

A strong breeze,

But a criminal blackness

As midnight lapsed.

In all honesty, I was not proud;

I tensed knees,

But my sense of righteousness

Had already collapsed…

Ushered from a dugout onto mud,

My task was to repair our wire;

I crawled, listening for the thud

Of shells on the shocking mire.

I slithered, pliers in hand,

To turn and twist torn ends;

Terrified, I tampered in a barbed land,

With entangled coils to mend.

Bothered by the detritus strewn,

The tatters of limbs were nauseating;

Young Englishmen, their lives cruelly hewn

And my vomit spilled, unrelenting.

I scrambled away in sickened retreat

But one hand an object grasped,

Ripped it from slime, pocketed it, a feat,

As I scrabbled away and then gasped…

In truth, it was a time-piece,

A war-issue British pocket-watch,

Displaying the moment of an infantryman’s death:

At ten-seventeen his life had lapsed…

In all honesty, I could feel no peace,

My breath I could barely catch;

For him there was no memorial, or wreath,

For humanity had all but collapsed…

Pete Ray

October 2016

I acquired the World War One pocket-watch and wondered who it had belonged to and how it had been found.

I wrote about it from the point of view of a German soldier, who might have come across it as he scurried back to his trench, following a night-foray to repair barbed wire…