18 NOVEMBER 1989, Page 41

A Village Remembrance

The ceremony at the Cenotaph Gets days like this. It's very still and dank.

My father, grave and pinched, wears a thick scarf But stands dead rigid like the sombre rank Of facing men. I think about the mud; The gas; the wire; my Uncle Leo who Didn't come home; rats, and the regular thud Of falling shells. But soon the rising true Call of Reveille lifts its fluttering notes And no! I won't, I bloody well won't cry.

O Lord! Behind the squad of overcoats Miss Monk's peke, Tinkerbelle, attracts my eye — And Toby mounting her outside the shop - And no one, no one's going to make them stop.

J. C. M. Hepple