I squat and shiver here in a trench just yards from No-Man’s Land

In place of my brother

Who refused to fight for King

And country or for the comradeship.

He would have been proud to wear a white feather

But I got the better of his conscious and made him

Let me take his place, even though I was too young to fight.

Now I see No-Man’s Land and

Its squalor, filth and sound of death that fills my ears

As people die for a blade of grass no longer there,

For a bomb crater men will kill to hold position

And be a step closer to their unrelenting objective

Or at least one step closer to their God.

No-Man’s Land is no place for me

For my brother’s keeper, his sister

The young woman with close cropped hair

A chipper smile soured by the sound of men dying

In No-Man’s Land.

Ian D. Hall 2013