A Poem for My Granddad

My Grandfather was killed in World War I. He was 41, and left behind a wife and seven children. He died on 9th April 1917, the very first day of the battle of Vimy Ridge. The fighting started at 5.30 a.m., and his battalion went 'over the top' at 8.15, in a snowstorm. Twenty-six men from his unit were killed that day. His body was never found.

In memory of Private Alfred Henry James, 1st Battalion, Queen's Own Royal West Kent Regiment.

TOO LATE NOW

Eleventh hour, eleventh day, eleventh month.

And I think of you

Who I never knew.

Imagining, in grown-up years,

The smile, the stance, the smell of you.

Too late for all that now.

You, who fell in Vimy mud

And died, they said, through loss of blood,

But never found.

Then who's to say what made you stay

And on what bloody ground

Your weeping body lay.

I went to Arras,

Took flowers, brought my children,

To where they'd etched your name.

And in that silent cemetery

Of three thousand buried dead,

Thousands had no name at all

Just names inscribed upon a wall

Never found,

In no-man's land.

Too late for all that now.

Too late for tears I would have shed

Too late to say the things unsaid

But on this day, in this eleventh hour,

I think of you.

And of all the things you missed,

All those faces left unkissed.

Too late for all that now.