Silenced Soldier

• Nina Leslie, Grade 6
• Poetry
• 2019

I scream as a bullet flies past my left ear, It hits a old friend and I shed a small tear.
All this madness and mayhem, I want it to stop. A knife and a lunge, I cry as I drop.
The world has gone fuzzy, my memory, unclear, I can sense all the sadness, despair and the fear.
A woman, mid thirties, clutching a boy. A small shout of loss as he lets go of a toy.
I think of my family, my children, my wife, as I have a flashback of my dull, boring life.
The sadness has burrowed the whole time, deep within, weighing my life between the good and the sin.
This war is just crazy, it’s gone out of hand. I look at the field, so boring, so bland.
The last bit of breath leaves my body, goodbye. Was this how I wanted to die?
It could’ve been family, kneeling down by my side, but instead a man, loyal to the Nazi’s side
A silent prayer, to all that I love, everyone was angels, but my mother, a dove,
I can see her now, she’ll collapse in a heap, pink telegram in hand as she begins to weep.
That was my very last, saddening thought,I am a proud saviour in the war that I fought.
I lie in the earth of the church of St Stephen, a nameless soldier who died for no reason.