More Poems

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Pastures Green

Pastures green, poppy fields,

graves for soldiers fallen.

A wooden cross marks a resting place,

a thousand miles from loved ones.

Rusted wire, silent guns,

trenches torn and broken.

A helmet rests on a rifle butt,

the tools of war unspoken.

Anzac Days, colours blaze,

their battle honours borne on.

Old men march and a bugle plays,

in memory of the fallen.

Mike Subritzky©

Ambush!

Young Kiwi soldiers, lying so quietly, merged into the rotting jungle floor.

Spaced in a line, rifles in hand,
machine guns steady, silent and still.

Platoon detailed as the Ambush Group, covering a jungle trail.

Waiting for the little Asian man,
dressed in his black, bag of rice,
armed with a Klashnikov.

The hours tick so slowly by, insects bite, birds and monkeys call.
But still they lie so silent, on the rotting jungle floor.

A first footfall! the snap of a twig! minds alert, eyes focused, safety catches off.

Place the foresight in the centre of the visible mass,

take the first pressure, silent prayer, the killing begins.

	. On Chunuk Bair On blood rock ground and desperate sill good Kiwi men and Turkish shell closed their ranks in the dawn-bright sun and turned the gullies and ridge-back spurs into killing grounds and halls of hell. A relentless squandering of young life- three hundred gallant Kiwi boys, their soldier's blood runnelling in falling sheets to ravines below, their dreams sucked up in a bitter noise. Dominions' sons erupting from the ground, blades thirsty for the tempering chest, charging bitter yards to enemy's trench, scythed down like the flowers of the field in tears on the broken earth's breast. Their bodies slumping without grace and the agony dimming within their eyes falling at last loose-limbed down the cruel steep slopes of Chunuk Bair in a welter of steel and snuffed out lives. Machine-guns stitching the already dead in corpse stench mounds and ravaged face, the horror of it all forever engraved upon the souls of the charging men who sweated fear and prayed for grace. And out at sea in Gallipoli's lee sat the general and sipped his gin, waved his cane and committed the blokes to outrageous slaughter upon the hills where Anzac birthed in the dreadful din. True men lie in gully shaded graves, the broken artifacts of man's war game, untimely wrapped in the torn land's breast now quiet and still in the winds of time and Chunuk Bair your Anzac fame. Lt. John A. Moller © RNZIR Whiskey Two Vietnam	.	..	South Pole Station One day at the South Pole a plane touched down, and I got out, and I stood on the ground. And all about me the earth was still, not a bird in the sky, not a tree or a hill. Just bright white snow that was frozen and cold, and a radio mast, and a barber shop pole. Mike Subritzky© Task Force 43 USN The Battery Parade The BSM yelled "Haircut!" And looked me in the eye. The RSM yelled "Sideboards!", But I didn't ask him why? The BC he yelled "Hat Badge!" His mouth it gave a twitch! My Section Boss yelled "Muddy Boots!", The dirty rotten bitch. My Section Sarge yelled "Muddy Boots!", Ye Gods what have I done? You've just become a Gunner son... And this is 1 - 6 - 1. Mike Subritzky 161 Battery RNZA
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