The Red Cross Car
September 18, 2012 - niawilliams
While looking through the thank you letters written to the Aberystwyth Comforts Fund I found this poem among them…
The Red Cross Car
(pte. J. Oswald Thomas) 54 7.A. R.A.M.C.
B.E.7 France
They are bringing them back who went out so bravely
Grey ghost like cars down the long white road
Come gliding, each with its cross of scarlet
On canvas hood, and its heavy load
Of human sheaves from the crimson harvest
That greed and falsehood and hatred sowed
Maimed and blinded, torn and shattered
Yet with hardly a groan or cry
From lips as white as the linen bandage
Though a stifled prayer, “God let me die”
To wring maybe from a soul in torment
As the car with the bloodred cross goes by.
The Red cross car! What a world of anguish
On noiseless wheels you bear night and day
Each one that comes from the field of slaughter
In a moving cavalry painted grey
And soon the waters at home in England
Lets praise the Red Cross Men, the people say.