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Hi Larry, Snow and Syl,

Thank you for popping in and commenting.


Yes, it's now been over 35 years since the bush war. (and Vietnam too) and our generation is rapidly passing on. Sadly, there is always a war raging somewhere

I have a lot of war poetry and stories but very little ever posted/published (or even shared with friends and family for that matter.) Partly due to the personal nature of the experiences and also because its a subject many find distasteful or hold strong opinions on. Unpleasant as it is, war is a reality that that cannot be swept under the table or will go away by ignoring it. Many of history's greatest bards sharpened their first pencils on the battle field.

This piece is fairly innocuous, a battle can be quite entertaining to watch until it gets close and personal. 99.9 % of a soldier's time is spent patrolling, waiting or observing so during that time much is seen and remembered that may actually have no bearing on the battle or the war.

Weapons technology may evolve with time but the duty of the infantry soldier has not really changed throughout history. Someone has to actually go there, do the dirty work and clean up the mess.


Cheers,

Wal

Third prize goes to author of "Flash in the Pan" with its effective use of rhyming couplets (and four-line stanzas) to describe a night-time artillery battle with mortar shells, hand-launched parachute flares (also known as "thousand-foot flare") and Katyusha, AKA "Stalin's Organ."

"Flash in the Pan" is an "action poem" that opens with a frightening exchange of fire, "a bump in the night? / Is that the start of an Eighty-one's flight? / Payload of chaos to no one knows where..."

A scene experienced from a distance before the camera, so to speak, zooms in close on a soldier, a single individual, at least as I read it, "Tiny hot flash of a rifle well-aimed / could modestly signal 'Your life has been claimed.'"

Hats of to a poet who can write about war (possibly in Afghanistan?) and doing so in rhyming iambic pentameter lines, i.e., ten-syllables to the line, two rhyming couplets to each stanza. There's a slight sing-songy quality that actually works for the poem, momentarily lulling the reader into a relative quiet, a dangerous quiet which, moments later, will be shattered by "shrieks overhead like a flaming banshee..."

Ambitious, a poem suggestive of a war veteran author, a poet with battle scars, and I like, too, the appropriate references to "Job" and "Icarus" which, in this context, feel right, that is, they seem to me "earned" and function as something more than decorative elements.

--Robert Sward