Moonscape

In the cemetery there are twelve thousand dead.

They fought and died for Paschendale.

Such slaughter took place.

One hundred and forty thousand Allies are missing.

Fighting and dying in a foreign land,

in a town that looks like a moonscape.

Obliterated.

Nothing left.

Pieces of bodies being found today:

German, British and French.

Indistinguishable from each other except by one thing:

death.

The war to end all wars failed.

So many died, so many maimed, so much destruction.

Tens of thousands killed in one day.

Infamous names burnt into Europe’s consciousness:

Somme, Ypres, Verdun, Paschendale and a thousand more.

Sixteen million people killed and no one remembers their name