The Centurions

The resurrected towers of Ypres,

Which rise on the eastern rim

Of this dead-flat plain,

Conjure a sepia vision

Of mowings down

And wipings out.

Buglers sound Reveille,

Cease Fire up Battle Alley,

Call up the ancient hate,

As every evening since,

Under the cavernous gate.

Centurions slump in wheelchairs,

A few still stand erect,

(Whisky, not beer, their elixir)

Shoulder to shoulder,

Jest with their neighbour.

Bloody good company the lice!

They nod. (Four would disappear

Before the next Memorial

Service came on air).

A veteran shook his head,

Bullets didn’ worry me,

Yer mind’s dead. Yuh can’t feel.

Mi biggest fear was bein’ took,

Theh med a got things out on me,

Ah di’nt want cold steel.

They smoke and talk:

Wi showed theh coudn’ walk

All over us (though now we do).

One lays a wreath on Joe below,

Joe lad, av cum back;

E were a reet good mate

(Scarcely grown to man’s estate)

He hobbles into line

As poppies fall like snow

Under the Menin Gate.

The remoteness of battle

Ferries them over,

They feed on superstition,

Legend and rumour.

The plain is ploughed

By a wailing demon;

A spirit of fire assails

Barbed gooseberries of wire;

They scramble to Armageddon

Where Fritz crucifies his prisoner

And Christ supplies immunity

From the Hun. A lucky coin,

An amulet, a formula or ditty,

Some loved one’s hair,

Or other strange device

Shields them from the ghost

Who strolls the allied lines

And the triple-headed dog

Which barks in holes

Where a shell may not strike twice.

Men feared where to tread

On the Menin Road;

Thunder of the guns

Harrowed them with wonder.

Ever and anon

Sparks and hideous noise

Streamed out in high abundance;

Rats would sally

Across the straight and narrow

Dead Man’s Alley.

The lousy rank and file,

In the Wipers Times,

Mocked the world’s unreason;

‘Nature Lover’ heard the cuckoo sing:

Surely I am the first this season ...

Behind the lines the majors sang

Play up! Play up! and so they did.

The plaudits ring for Haig

And George the Fifth and Plumer,

Haig on the king’s left hand,

Gripping leather gloves,

Jutting his trim

White-bearded chin,

Straps well polished

(But not by him)

Hand on his sword,

Confident left boot advancing,

Eyes fixed on the dark figure,

Beneath the black cloth stooping.

Junior officers at the front

Soon abandoned jodhpurs -

A thin-legged target in the khaki line

For Fritz. But Haig and Plumer

Went on wearing theirs.

Plum on George’s right,

High waist, pot belly, slack

Chin, white hair, leaning slightly,

Looks somewhat taken aback.

He buried Fritz ten thousand times

When he detonated mines

Beneath the German lines.

Nineteen of twenty-one

Went up at once.

Another waited forty years;

The veterans still reminisce

About one last mis-fire.

What would be disinterred

Should that bloody mine explode

Under Ploegsteert Wood

By the Menin Road?

A hundred boneyards patch

The ancient Wipers salient

Where Protestant Irish

Shared a death with Papist

On the Messines ridge.

Around Tyne Cot’s

Twelve thousand graves,

Allus somun’s feyther, somun’s chile,

Farmers still dispose

Ploughed-up bones and metal

On the farmyard pile.

And triple rows of trenches

Which faintly mark the soil

When the sun is low,

Recall within its counterglow

Howitzers which growled

About the old Cloth Hall

Where a single jaunty gargoyle

Jeered and scowled.

©Terry Hodgson2026