‘Lest We Forget...’

I heard my friend cry, and he sank to his knees,
Coughing blood as he screamed for his mother,
And I fell by his side, and that's how we died,
Clinging like kids to each other,

And I lay in the mud and the guts and the blood,
And I wept as his body grew colder,
And I called for my mother and she never came,
Though it wasn't my fault and I wasn't to blame,
The day not half over and ten thousand slain,
But students today could care less for our names.
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(Today in 2018 the students of Cambridge don't wish to remember our names.)

 

Guy Hewett was my grandfather.
He was the regimental bugler at Aldershot
Training Camp.
The CO wanted to keep him there, but he opted to go with his mates to fight in France.
He was in the Royal Army Medical Corps, and was a stretcher bearer at the Battle of the Somme.
The battle raged for five months.
On the first day alone, the British Army lost
20,000 men.
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He sent this photograph to my father in 1917.
The message on the back is:
“To dear little Reggie
With lots of love and kisses
and Best Wishes for a
Happy Christmas from your
Soldier Daddy.
xxxxxxxxxx
I hope Father Christmas will put
lots of things in your Christmas
Stocking.”
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In the photograph Guy is standing
on the left. He wrote on the back of
the picture: “My two friends died.”
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One of his funny sayings was:

“Them Germans was alright (POWs),
but you gotta watch the French.
They’d take your eyes out if you wasn’t lookin’
- next day they’d come back for the sockets...”