And they walked

They walked on fields that had long since stopped holding that name.
No greeting theirs, no fine hurrah;
rather the eager silence of a broken landscape
that would take years to correct
and even longer to remember.
These battlefields, these murder royale;
man laid bare to the whims and fancy
of the armchair Field Marshalls.
Yet no fanciful state of glory here,
just an all consuming earth
that swallows its victims
as easy as day gives way to night.
And still they walk,
the firing squad assuring their demure attention
to formation, to valour, to country.
Silence. Deafening devils music.
And yet still await, a hustle and bustle
as men get ready to rise afore they fall.
Suddenly the deafening blast
as missile after missile shoots across the sky
that has suddenly turned quiet day
into a raucous night of killing.
Still they walk,
brave one and all,
they rise to conquer
and stoop to fall.

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