Let them have seen the poppies.

Seeing the multitude of missing men, looking at their names so profoundly engraved into the walls at Menin Gate burnt a hole in any knowledge I thought I had about the desolation and destruction of war.

Looking at the names.. just looking at the names.. brought about a realisation that I know nothing of what went on, what it must have been like for the hundreds of thousands of men slaughtered on the fields..

I know nothing.

There are so many unanswered questions.. so many stories left untold.

Do they wake hearing the rumbling of gunfire? ..
Do they still cry for the ones who fell?..

Can you imagine.. just imagine.. watching a friend.. not just a friend.. a brother fall? Knowing there was nothing in your power you could do unless you wanted to fill the empty bit of earth beside him?

You can see the brutality and immensity of such things.. But I will never feel it.. Not a single soul can tell me they have.. unless they have been there.. unless they themselves have witnessed the endless slaughter.. the mass of death becoming as concrete as the earth they rest upon.

Tell me something.. Do they still feel the trembling of the earth beneath their feet? Can they still see those expressionless faces? The empty bodies defining the rigidity of the fields.

Can they still feel those blistering heels?
Do they feel the endless pain of aching muscles, of tortured souls?
Will they forever see the blood? The thick pools of an endless red streaming far into the depths of the earth.

Will they forever smell the profound stench of death? The stale smell polluting the poppy filled fields.. destroying what little beauty the world seemed to have left. I wonder if they noticed the poppies.. or was their beauty constricted between the barriers of survival and death? You can not tell me you know.. Nobody will ever truly know.

I hope they saw the poppies..
The simplistic beauty of such a simple flower.. I would like to think it brought them hope.. reminded them of the beauty of their families.. the lives they left behind.

Let them have seen the poppies..

There are those who know about the history of war.. the dates, who fought who, the multitude of the dead and the overall magnitude of the war.. but they can not tell you about why grown men cried. They can not tell you about the emotional journey.. what it felt like to be surrounded by death.. to be crawling through an endless sea of dead, knowing your brothers could be among the ripples.. knowing you could not stop and look at their faces, in fear of who you might find.

Can they tell you what it felt like to hear the voice of a friend you feared was dead? How just a voice can bring someone so much hope in a world.. their world.. of despair.
They can give you an idea.. but until you have heard it spoken from the mouth of a soldier.. it is just an idea.. a faint depiction of reality.

I have seen the photos, the destruction left behind and I have heard the stories, those desolating depictions of war. I have been confronted with hundreds of thousands of names..

But still...
I know nothing.

We know nothing.