Let Reveille sound
across the fields and hills
of France to raise the dead
from where they lay
in foreign soil
and woods regrown, now let
the unknown graves release
their unknown dead to rise again
when the whistles blow
rise up from where they fell
to march to pipers mournful tune
the skirl of pipe and swirl of kilt
and sing familiar songs of old
that raise the spirits
on the long trek forward
to the trenches and the mud
of no-man’s-land.
Tread softly through the poppy fields
the meadows where the skylarks sing
above the buttercups and dancing grasses
tangled wire and unexploded shells.
They smile and wave as they pass by
lift their helmets wave their spades
bear the pack upon their back
then stand in silence by the graves
of friends and comrades
who remain in Flanders fields.
Geoffrey C. Phillips
