Now Bobby Belfast was born by the docks
Where the gulls screamed loud round the chimney pots,
Where rainwater danced down the black cobbled lanes
And children kicked cans by the old windowpanes.
Now Bobby wore trousers with patches on knees
And nicked apples fresh from the neighbour’s wee trees,
And Bobby loved hearing the old soldiers speak
Of uniforms polished and armies elite.
“The war to end wars!” all the newspapers cried,
With kings painted proud and drums beaten wide,
So Bobby marched off with a grin and a wave
Like thousands of boys being marched to the grave.
There was Sammy McBride from the Shankill Row
Who sang through his teeth in the freezing cold snow,
And Thomas Fitzpatrick from just near the mills
Who carried black tea in old medicine stills.
And nobody there thought themselves brave or grand,
They were bricklayers, dockworkers, boys from the strand,
With mothers who cried in the doorway at night
And fathers pretending the thing was alright.
Then over in France went Bobby Belfast
Where the trenchwater swallowed the boots as they passed,
Where rats grew fat from the dead down below
And the sky flashed white like striking matches in rows.
Now Bobby saw William McCann lose his head
While halfway through saying: “Pass over the bread.”
And nobody screamed. Not one person spoke.
For death in the trenches arrived like a joke.
One minute a man would be scratching his chin,
Complaining the soup had a boot floating in,
The next there’d be nothing but smoke in the rain
And lads staring blank at the bits that remained.
And Bobby remembered the smell more than sight,
The mud and the cordite that sat in the night,
The stink of wet wool mixed with copper and smoke
And candles all trembling whenever guns spoke.
And Bobby remembered young Edward Malone
Who cried every night for the girl back at home,
Who kept her last letter tucked close in his shirt
Till both him and the letter got buried in dirt.
And Bobby remembered big Joseph McCann
Who once boxed three sailors behind Kelly’s stand,
Reduced to a boy with his hands round his face
While whispering prayers in a rat covered place.
And Bobby thought often while crouched in the grime
How strange it all was in the grand scheme of time.
For over the trench near the barbed wire bends
The Germans were doing the selfsame again.
Coughing.
And shaking.
And writing back home.
And praying the shells wouldn’t smash through their bones.
Then one freezing night by the edge of the wire
A German named Klaus stepped out into the fire,
No rifle. No shouting. No murderous grin.
Just hunger and tiredness carved into his skin.
And Klaus showed a picture all folded with wear
Of two little children with bright curly hair,
And Bobby just stared at the photograph long
For Klaus looked like lads he had drank with back home.
And Bobby wished quiet while snow filled the trench:
“Maybe if it wasn’t for the uniforms. We would all be friends.”
Then BOOM went the cannons. And CRASH went the sky.
And boys who’d been laughing had tragically died.
And Bobby stopped counting the dead after spring
For numbers made corpses feel less like a thing.
Now sometimes at night all the wounded would cry
Not loud like in pictures where heroes all die,
But small frightened noises like children half lost
While winter crept slow through the frostbitten dark.
And medics with shaking red hands and wet boots
Would step over bodies and half broken youths,
And somewhere a soldier would call for his mum
Though whiskers had already grown on his gums.
And Bobby still heard it years after the war
In kettle steam rattling and rain at the door.
The war did end. That part was true.
The bells all rang and the white doves flew.
The generals smiled beside maps and cigars
While mothers identified sons behind tarps.
And Bobby came home with a medal of brass
And eyes that looked older each time someone passed,
And Belfast all cheered while the brass bands played
But Bobby just stared like part of him stayed.
Stayed in the trenches. Stayed in the mud.
Stayed with the boys swallowed whole by the blood.
Now people love saying: “They died for the crown.”
But Bobby remembered them cold on the ground.
He remembered them coughing. Remembered them pale.
He remembered them joking while scared stiff as hell.
For Patrick O’Hare still owed Sammy two quid.
And Edward Malone was just somebody’s kid.
And all of the glory the newspapers sold
Could not warm the trenches or soften the cold.
Then years rolled onward like smoke in the rain
But Bobby Belfast never slept quite the same,
For every loud bang and each firework bright
Dragged all of the trenches back into the night.
And Bobby grew old near the cold Belfast shore
Still haunted by what people called “the great war,”
And sometimes he’d sit while the rain tapped the glass
And think how the whole bloody thing came to pass.
How Klaus loved his children. Edward loved jazz.
And Sammy McBride made wee toy boats in class.
Yet somehow a jacket, a medal, a name,
Could make decent young lads set the whole world aflame.
Bobby Belfast and the War to End Wars (Ⓒ J.P. 2026)
Inspired by (some interesting) school taught history and Wilfred Owen.
Please share if you like this on (Facebook) – (Twitter-X).
Link to other WW1 recruitment, propaganda and conscription posters at the IWM London.
*This is irregular site content, and not the scores or reviews I normally post. More of this type of stuff is posted here.
