NIGHT GHOULS

Men.
With half their faces hanging open
Men;
with both their limbs torn from one side
But this was no childs story,
of a ghosting:
This was real, a place where young men died

This .was no childs dream
of panicked nightmare.
These were men
you picked up from the ground;
These had wounds,
no face paint could supply there:
These were men who bled without a sound

These. were men you carried,
and who waited,
Treatment ,
in the guttring Aid-posts light;
These- the men who crawled,
when fire abated:
Or lowly quivered pain into the night

These fields
no product of a childish fervour:
No tin-soldiers paint
Begins to peal;
These were men alive
inside the terror.
These were men who felt the nightmare real

(Although not the intended theme of this poem, shell-shocked men often found their symptoms more haunting at night, when alone in the silence)