I WROTE this poem in 1950 for a competition.

My granddad was there in the First World War and was picked for the firing squad when the two young lads featured were shot. In fact he was stood down from the firing squad and a book was later written about this incident in our history.

As it is now 100 years since the war, I thought this story should be told again.
 

Wold’s Farm Boys

They shot all the cowards, least that’s what they thought.

Two were only fifteen years old when they answered to their call, to the recruitment tents on the village green, where once they had played as soldiers, now this time it was real.

They gave them a uniform, a bayonet and a gun; shouted to them “You there, get fell in.” They marched them to their transport,

Then to a waiting ship which took them to foreign fields, where they had never been before, to ready dug trenches with comrades side by side and this was how they were to live or maybe were to die.

Shells burst all around them, some just above their heads. They held their nerves for weeks on end; but suddenly they fled. They turned around and ran away, they knew they would be found, then taken to a corner of that foreign field, strapped into a chair, a target put on their chests, the order given to fire.

No more cowards there!

K F Durkin, Pocklington.