Her dark heart smiled Beckoning them forth Her name dancing On silenced tongues Hail ye! Hail ye! Row upon blue row they stood Far as the reach of an eagle’s eye Loaded carbines on their backs Allegiance to her their hearts’ tempo To war! To war! Their ch...
The events that would end in the major’s death began to unfold long before Christmas Eve. This I know only retrospectively: until the moment the major was shot, none of us could have predicted it. One thing you learn during wartime – more than at any othe...
They say that war is hell, it is. It’s a hell I unwittingly chose. I was fifteen at the time. I lived in a little known northern town in England. Not much happened in my town. The men went to work down the mines, the women stayed at home. It was all quite...
Voldar knelt before the statue of the great warrior and wept. Around her were the ruins of the city she had once called home. Foes had swept over it weeks before. “How could you let this happen?” Voldar cried, “You swore to protect them.” But the statue r...
My name is Leila. I'm a lesbian from Iran. I migrated to Britain a few years ago. I was a teacher in my country and the story that follows happened in the summer of 1986 when I was in my twenties. In order to make my story understandable for a foreign rea...
Dear Humans, You're all so weird! Sorry, let me start that again. I've been on your planet for 35 years. I've witnessed some things that I wouldn't want anyone else to, yet people do. I've seen the world through the eyes of a baby, growing up to become an...
Wake to fire and thunder. As the earth trembles. Coffee and hardtack. Light blowing rain. Bugles calling. Rattle of drums. Orders barked. Mighty mounts. Hoofs pawing. Saddles await. Cheering troopers. Look to the sergeants. Shakos pulled down. Power k...
Travel the weather. To where we are built of bricks and clay. Let us speak of lost kingdoms and broken weapons. When did the ghost of time bead on the rim of a shattered Scottish well? Where in the piles of dead is there an ember that spans the seasons of...
Battle joined. Thunder. Smoke and grape. Galloping horses. Pride of France. Wave upon wave. Silver blinding. They rode. Crasing upon Red sticks waiting in the sun. Flashing steel. Rattle of musketry. Friends and foes. Tangled. In deaths throes. As I...
On that cloudy day, she watched as a black sedan pulled into her driveway. Her heart dropped as two dressed soldiers walked up to her front door. Little Jake all but a year old on her hip, she knew to good would come from this visit. Both soldiers poli...
At the age of nine, lying in the children's ward. Rheumatic fever, burning though me. Nuns and Doctors come and go, tending a full ward of eight boys. Across from me lay a new boy, no more than five years old. Sadly for he had survived, his family fire. A...
No glory, only pride You played your part in a theatre where so many died On foreign soil, a strange language Memories of the old country in your heart Again and again you took to the air I can barely imagine your bravery The noise, the engines, guns If y...
Sun-dried mud on youthful faces. Waiting for the shrill sound of whistles. Rolling thunder, foot by foot. Sending earth tossed to heaven. Drips of crimson foam splash mates, along the trench lines. Orders barked with the shrill whistles. "Over the top boy...
I sit on the beach, absently raking fingertips through the warm sand while listening to the cheerful clamour all around. My fellow holidaymakers laugh, squeal, shout to one another, their shrill cries mingling with the raucous shrieks of the gulls wheel...
