Upon a hill I stood its memories overgrown by time,
The peace belayed my presence for
One hundred years ago a man was here,
Close to my heart, stood trench deep and under fire.
Then this peaceful world roared like an angry sea
Charged with fury, blood and death,
A place no longer friendly to a man,
As light split heads the valley screamed with mortar fire.
Beneath a canopy of fear not stars
Men found strength in a thread of hope.
This thread I followed to this very place
Where courage won a hundred years ago.
Where men clung to that last strand of hope
And prayed; one man answered to the call,
In deference to his life immured to death,
And rescued — under fire — injured men.
And brought them home, saved from a headstone,
Which now line in purest white, across this land.
Here on this hill, a hundred years ago
He took the war and shook it by the neck,
And of his blood I am and proud to be his child,
To breath this air where once he would have stood,
His gift, my will, his love, my life, his war
A battle which by chancing life, he won.
Caroline Anns-Baldock © August 2019
In 2019, with help from a friend, I found where my father Captain Kenneth Anns, won his Military Cross in August 1916, sighted for gallantry.