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Poppy's Secret
 

What have you got in the box poppy?
Can I open it and see?
Is it a secret poppy?
Would you share your secret with me?
The old man's eyes filled with tears as he gazed at his Grandson.
"These are my war medals" he replied,"for I was in World War One".
His grandson's eyes opened wide when his medals he revealed,
for he had often wondered what secret that box concealed.
Laying them before him, so shimy and so bright,
to a little boy's eyes it was an awesome sight.
Tell me some stories Poppy about World War One,
Tell me about the things that you have seen and done.
In a trembling voice his story he did tell,
the words that he spoke made his body chill.
I enlisted in the Newfoundland Regiment and was sent overseas.
To a place called Beaumont Hamel where I fought to keep my country free.
I lived in muddy trenches that were sometimes knee deep,
often cold, tired, and hungry with no comfortable place to sleep.
I had to watch my good friends die when fatally wounded by the foe,
there was nothing I could do and it grieved me so.
When an order was given by the brass it had to be obeyed,
many loyal soldiers with their lives had paid.
I shall never will forget that fateful day on July 1st, 1916;
for as long as I live, I will see it in my dreams.
There was to be a surprise attack but fate was unkind,
The enemy was alerted by an exploding mine.
The Newfoundland Regiment were gunned down by machine gun fire
by the German soldiers behind the barbed wire.
Hundred of Newfoundlanders lost their lives on that tragic day,
the mud was red beneath them as their life's blood ebbed away.
The old man fell silent and and wiped away his tears,
his memories still haunted him after all those years.
He lay the medals in the box and replaced the lid,
the shiny medals still revealed the faces of the dead.
 

By: Yvonne Legge
(C)copyright2000