Foreign Fields

A modern poem about the First World War by Christopher Armstrong



British and French troops buried in a mass grave by German troops 1916/1917


Where are we going?

         To a foreign field son

Why are we going?

         My great-great-grandfather did

Why did he go?

         To serve King and Country

When did he go?

         In August of nineteen hundred and fourteen

Did he go alone?

         He went with a hundred thousand fellow Tommies

Did he come back?

         That is what this lone poppy is for

Where are we going?

         To place this lone poppy in a field of poppies

Why a field of poppies?

         For each who didn't return in nineteen hundred and eighteen

In a foreign fields?

         Yes son, in a foreign fields

 

Stone of Remembrance, the Buttes New British Cemetery, Belgium

Between 800,000 and over a million British men died during the Great War.  The sub-total for the British Empire is between 1,030,000 and nearly 1,250,000 soldiers.  The estimated total for all countries involved is over 15 million and over 17 million soldiers.  Unbelievable! 

Wilfred Owen was right is his war poem written between October 1917 and March 1918 Dulce et Decorum est:

The Old Lie: Dulce et Decorum est pro patria mori

In English translated from Latin:

The Old Lie: It is sweet and fitting to die for your country

What Owen wrote has been proven right in the past century till 1914 when wars becomes industrialized on unbelievable scales. 

 

Second Lieutenant Wilfred Owen Military Cross (MC) was killed in action on the 4th of November 1918 - a week before the 11th.