During the battle of the Somme, France,1916, the British sustained 60,000 casualties on the first day. Torrential rains turned the battlefield into a quagmire. In one month the Allies advanced five miles at the cost of 450,000 German.200,000 French and 420,000 British lives. I lost two uncles
Blood red poppies sway
Over silent fields
Where birds no longer sing.
Once big guns roared
And young men
Suffered terror in the mud.
Chaplains searched the carnage for God
Finding him gassed and bloody
Crucified upon the wire
One poppy lost among the thousands.
Colin Ian Jeffery
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/blood-red-poppies/
