Sunday 8 November 2015

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.