I was walking down the slight hill towards the goods yard

It was a trip that I made on most days as I worked there

My job was to supervise the loading and unloading of goods

The post was secure and the railway company left me alone

But on this day something was wrong as did not have a shirt

Indeed I was topless and felt a little uncomfortable about it

But nobody seemed to notice that I was not in uniform

 

The yard was empty when I arrived and I sat in the mess room

With George Alan Steve and Ruth chatting and drinking coffee

I then decided to borrow a shirt from Sam who was my height

Sam was in hospital with a broken leg after being struck by a car

It was only after I started my shift wearing poor Sam’s shirt

That I began to experience clearly the visceral terrors of his war

This made me feel ill and not suspecting it be the shirt I wept

 

I too had experienced terrible things during the late war

And had been involved in looting and the lazy executions of broken men

But I had put this behind me when I returned home and locked the box

My colleagues comforted me as they did Sam when the war terrors appeared

But little did they know that Sam had been a hero a fine and honourable soldier

Which was the opposite of my filthy war of greed violence and random killings

I had always wondered God’s punishment might be and now my eyes had been opened

 

Peter Gray