The following, plus the next post, are to accompany my guest blog post at 26Treasures, itself written to accompany a piece soon to be displayed alongside Daniel Laidlaw‘s medals in the National Museum of Scotland.
That final piece was also the first to occur to me, but was only written after trying out a couple of other ideas involving music and warfare. This was one of them…
Duty in our hearts, laddies
Dance to my tune laddies,
Skip a turn across craters of poison,
Hop the barbs set to decline,
Swing bayonets; slice and asunder,
Twirl the foe into the slime.
And all the time you’ll keep the line, laddies,
Hold it fast, hold it fine.
There’s duty in our hearts, laddies,
King and Country,
‘til the end of time.
Skip a turn across craters of poison,
Hop the barbs set to decline,
Swing bayonets; slice and asunder,
Twirl the foe into the slime.
Hold it fast, hold it fine.
There’s duty in our hearts, laddies,
King and Country,
‘til the end of time.
jfderry.wordpress.com 
Your guest blog is a great piece of writing and the poem only adds to it. Thanks.
cheers Mart – awaiting your recent travels blog
Your poem is good but the reality is these men lived through hell i wonder if they saw it that way
well, thanks for your comment. i could never hope to capture the horror of WWI. I try to explain my reasons in another post
https://jfderry.wordpress.com/2011/10/04/the-piper-of-loos-3/#comment-1200
that accompanies the final piece
https://jfderry.wordpress.com/2012/01/26/26treasures-trove/