conscription by John Houghton

Off to join up, for my country needs my time
Signed on the dotted line a young man in my prime
Trained many weeks to become a fighting soldier
Not realising that I would not be getting much older
Trained to become a hard mean fighting machine
But for fighting a war we were decidedly green
Waiting for the order for another charge into hell
Will I be brave and let no one down, this I can not tell
Over the top as the whistle blows, here we go
a screaming artillery shell lays me low
Lying in a trench full of mud and slime
a thought crosses my mind, is it my time
No longer now can I hear the battles sound
as I lie here prostrate and dead on the ground
Trapped here forgotten on this lonely foreign soil
These last days of mine on this earth have been spent
as the bugle sounds its last post strident lament
The sun goes down and its warmth fades away
Literate scribes write down another history day
I fought for my country for what it was worth
Here I lie now beneath a foreign country's earth
Will you remember me many years from now
and will the world come to live together somehow