Island Soldier

Royal Newfoundland Regiment of WWI

I grew up on Change Islands in NL.  Many people served and still do who are from or have roots in our town but I always think of those who were lost in the first and second world war on Newfoundland on this date. Their pictures hang in public halls and family living rooms. They are remembered yet in memory they become abstract sometimes.  We recall their stories and their lives while at the same time we forget how very human these men and their familes were.

I wrote this little ballad this morning as I thought of one young man who died at Beaumont Hamel, Pte Archibald Porter who did not get to leave descendants or tell his story.  He was 18 when he died.  He could be any soldier but it isn't, it is Archie whose body was so destroyed he was listed as missing until his mother Lucy implored a local man to investigate if he were truly dead.  He was and a telegram came with a medal and a cheque from the war office a year later with the sad news.  I think of him every Nov 11 simply because I think somebody should.

  

Island Soldier

He walked the trails that we all walk

He laughed in the air we breathe

He fished the sea from which we take

The bounty he bequeathed

He rolled his baccy on a creaking dock

He elbowed his friends in joke

He sang aloud many a song

He lit up many a smoke

He chewed a blade of grass and wondered

At what was past this land

And he grinned and said “I think I’ll join”

And find out that first hand

He travelled far across the sea

How he missed that crimson sky

that warmed his island home each night

and bid each day good bye

He suffered in a foreign trench

While an island breeze swept though

The memories of an island boy

Who did what boys must do

He wrote that things were going well

While his heart beat in his throat

For death knocked on his door each day

though he dare not tell them in a note

The world he saw was a muddy hole

Where he waited for the day

To live or die at chance’s choice

In a place so far away

She walked the trails that we all walk

Laughed in the air we breathed

Until a telegram came through

With all that he’d bequeathed

A small salary and a metal disc

All traded for a son

But the king was happy as was the land

That the war was finally won

He traveled far across the sea

Far from the crimson sky

That warmed his island home each night

And bid him fond good bye