When you visit 'The Flying Duck', go upstairs and see The Wharfedale Poets, 'Poem of the Month' in a white frame on one of the tables there.

From 'Whetstone Words'.

Adlestrop Remembered 1956

Bad enough to leave my wife,

For a barrack room, woken at five.

Yob Corporal bike rides through and howls

 ‘ . . . Y’ain’t nuthin but a houn’ dog’.

Kicks kit and coal bucket flying.

We stand in line under a shivering moon,

In lonely misery for both years to come.

More drill, our stupid squad, robbed of ourselves,

Hair cut short, shabby denims and to crown it all

A North Irish bigot chaplain to teach us morals!

Malvern camp, no Elgar here.

Just threats and shouts but

At last a troop train out

A time for sleep,

To rest,

In the coach’s moquette fug.

A slowing, a blessed quiet, a stop.

No birdsong on this hoar frost day,

A whistle, lurch, a hiss,  - then on our way

from

Adlestrop.

To Aldershot,

To the drill pigs’ bawls,

And hope for leave . . . which we have not got.

Bill Berrett

'Whetstone Words', our second anthology, Autumn 2015.