The Battle Of The Somme by Dennis Allen Lange

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Another war and time, another place
About the foe he had begun to face,
Grant said, “I’ll fight it out upon this line
If it all summer takes till it is mine.”

And following the stubbornness of mules,
The Great War foes fought on like fools
Upon a line along the River Somme
Without the flair of war, without aplomb.
As if a duel with twenty paces stepped,
They stayed while many new-made widows wept
For five long months while each side’s pain
Grew even larger without any gain.
They slogged it out upon that bloody sod
Without a thought to man or even God,
With Germany and all its Axis band
Fixed on the solitary goal of land.
A solemn summer turned to somber fall
And Somme became a soggy grave, a gall
A million drank. And sobbing? – even more,
As Somme showed the futility of war.

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© Dennis Allen Lange and thebardonthehill.wordpress.com, 2018.

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Pearl Harbor by Dennis Allen Lange

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Japan bombed Pearl, won by a crooked score.
Though U.S. fleet was famed, they left it sunk and maimed.
But cost to Japs and Germany was more. 

The Japs pretended peace instead of war.
With many subtle lies, they took us by surprise.
Japan bombed Pearl, won by a crooked score. 

Our sailors did not hear the distant roar
Till death was overhead, and bombs were in their bed.
But cost to Japs and Germany was more. 

The Arizona sank to harbor’s floor
Eight battleships were hit; war’s fire by them was lit.
Japan bombed Pearl, won by a crooked score. 

Two thousand U.S. (more!) went out death’s door.
Japan lost but a few of all the ones that flew.
Still, cost to Japs and Germany was more. 

True victors are the ones when war is o’er
Not at the rising sun when war has just begun.
Japan that day won by a crooked score,
But cost both them and Germany the war.

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© Dennis Allen Lange and thebardonthehill.wordpress.com, 2017.

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Sonnet 67 – Winston Churchill by Dennis Allen Lange

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The bulldog stood upon the English shore
And growled across the channel at the scourge
That swept through Europe, knocked on England’s door.
He knew they wouldn’t lose, though on the verge. 

His bark was sweetest Britain ever heard;
His bite in war, for Hitler, was severe.
And by his speeches, Englishmen were stirred;
His expertise would vict’ry engineer. 

Great eloquence was in the books he wrote,
Revealing insight by the records kept.
The kindest critic, never one to gloat,
A gentle wind that shaped all that it swept. 

There never was a nobler Nobel Prize
Than his; and he, the world should lionize.

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© Dennis Allen Lange and thebardonthehill.wordpress.com, 2017.

 

 

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Sonnet 66 – Hitler by Dennis Allen Lange

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He was a devil wanting Satan’s throne,
With failed Napoleon’s heart, to rule the world,
And was so arrogant he thought his own
One land could stand against all forces hurled. 

A power peacock, nation bully, beast,
Who thought himself and kind superior.
He proved to all instead to be the least,
Since mark of men is they can shed a tear. 

Against a hist’ry lesson that he knew,
He sought a second front against the Russian bear,
And greedy, bit off more than he could chew,
And choked to death upon that frozen fare. 

The world remembers him as bloody ghoul,
But Adolf Hitler lived and died a fool.

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© Dennis Allen Lange and thebardonthehill.wordpress.com, 2017.

 

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Railway To Freedom by Dennis Lange

…………..Railway To Freedom

The cattle were loaded and only could stand
While carried about through the dark hateful land
In trains that were crowded with all they could bear
And rolled on for hours, or days of despair.

In freezing or swelter, the cars were closed tight,
No caring if anguish or death was their plight.
No food (sometimes water), no news of ahead,
The cattle were counted as already dead.

If cortege was lengthy, an eighteen day trip,
The train stopped at nowhere and let corpses slip;
And sometimes the whole of a boxcar was thrown
Out onto the meadow, cold, hard as a stone.

We wonder that cattle, mere cattle, weren’t seen
As creatures that suffer; but hearts were so lean,
Humanity lacked in the handlers themselves,
The cattle more human than dark Santa’s elves.

Their lowing internal, the moan of despair,
Was halted by slowing; brakes’ screams filled the air.
And then there was silence, dead silence, dead pause,
And cattle all wondered what was this death’s cause.

A soldier (a Nazi) in charge of the train
Flung open the doors so he then could explain:
“Get out of the boxcars, for here ends your pains.
We’ll show you your chambers, much better than trains.

“The tracks and the train will go on by design;
For all of you Jews – it’s the end of the line.”
This stop is at Auschwitz; here, work makes you free,
The work that we Nazis will do carefully.

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***The sign over the entrance to Auschwitz read,
….. “Work Makes You Free”.

***1.1 to 4.1 million people died there.

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The photo, by Alex Bruda, is a photo of the railway
and the death camp.

http://www.rgbstock.com/photo/mffYmvm/auschwitz+33

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© Dennis Lange and thebardonthehill.wordpress.com, 2015.

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