The war to end all wars was over. I was standing in a long line of khaki-clad soldiers in greatcoats and blancoed webbing, my mood troubled by mixed thoughts and emotions. There was little movement and certainly no jostling as we all waited in the cold, sleety rain for our turn to embark. I perceived an almost reluctance to board, but it was a reluctance that I shared and therefore understood. The ship, seemingly made distant by the rain, and tethered with ropes as thick as a man’s arm to rusty bollards fore and aft, lay alongside the pier, looking as grey as each of us must have felt. We were heading home, home to England. The exultancy of victory and the euphoria of armistice had abated now to be replaced by the guilt that it was we who were returning home. And with the guilt, a certain melancholy and a hopeless sense of sorrow for the comrades and brothers that would remain here, never to return. They would guard those miles of trenches and duckboards that bore all of their life’s blood. They would be stewards to those fields of blood-red poppies. And we would not forget them.t ttyuyt
