No visit to a gracious Queen,
No presentation honouring the dead.
The day his medal came
Her fingers fumbled with the padded envelope;
Ribbon and steel dropped from her hand,
Another piece rolled out of sight.

When they came home they found her there,
Tears falling on the polished floor,
Trying to fit the fragments of her son,
to make sense of the scattered jigsaw of his life.
Home-assembly decoration kits
By order of a grateful Government,
'Attributed to Sheila Parry '

Broken like the bodies
They were made to celebrate.
But then he was, at seventeen, hardly a soldier.
Just a name and number in the power game.
Mail-order hero of a battle scene..