Veteran Alex Mossman’s moving accounts of war

His son, Alan, said he had always admired the poems, but they had never been published to a wider audience.

So now, to mark Remembrance Sunday, Alan has asked The Press to reproduce some of the work by his 94-year-old father, of Hamilton Drive, Holgate, York.

Alan said one of them, entitled Convoy, reproduced right, relates to an incident in the North African desert when his father’s military convoy was strafed by a German Stuka bomber.

“He was a fitter, so always stayed in the last vehicle so he could see if any vehicle had broken down and needed assistance,” he said. “Every other vehicle was hit but his, and he survived the war unharmed. I think the poem is really good.”

The Press showed the poems to Professor Hugh Haughton, of the University of York’s Department of English And Related Literature, who compiled an anthology called Second World War Poems a number of years ago.

Prof Haughton said it was always moving to see records by survivors like Alex Mossman, as they struggled with memories of war.

“Poems like Alex’s are different from those of more ‘literary’ poetic combatants, like Keith Douglas or Alun Lewis, but they have their own documentary value,” he said.

“It is interesting that since the anthologies of soldier poets of the Second World War, war has driven people who do not normally write them to write poems, as I guess is Alex’s case. War poetry is a hard act to pull off, of course, all the same.

“I was particularly struck by the sense of condensed first-hand reporting in Sniper, which gave a whiff of the real, and it is good to see these poems coming to light more than 60 years on.”

Convoy

The screaming Stuka dives
Out of the bright blue desert sky
And rakes our convoy with bullet and cannon shell
No time to think “Am I going to die?”
Men and vehicles shot to hell.

Exploding ammunition, petrol fires
Human screams from makeshift funeral pyres
The raider back to base has fled
Leaving us our wounded and our dead.

The miracle is, it must be said,
That I'm alive and better men than I are dead.

Enemy shells whiz overhead
They find the range and you duck your head
And dive for cover to save your terrified skin.

When the shellings over
Bad news for someone's kith and kin.

Irish Paddy's lost a leg
And someone's only half a head.

The miracle is, though splashed with blood,
I'm still alive when better men have gone for good.

Sniper

The one figure kept to the shadows
Of the blacked-out village night
He had to reach the church tower
Before the dawning light.

With practised stealth he moved
Among the graveyard stone
A pause to listen, a backward glance
Ensured he was alone.

Then swiftly to the deeper shadows
Of the shell-pocked church door porch
And down the eerie centre aisle,
No light, no guiding torch.

East, towards the altar,
Every step he knew,
Here was fallen masonry,
There a broken pew.

But he hadn't come to church this night
To weep, not yet to pray,
Nor would Christian sentiment
Deter him from killing that day.

So to the iron studded door
At the foot of the bell tower stair
That winds around its newel post
Up, up to a sniper's lair.

There to await the morning light
With rifle, ammunition, telescopic sight
Then God help the enemy who came
Unsuspecting within his aim
Cross hairs fixed on breast or head,
Steady, squeeze the trigger; he's dead.

The Last Farewell

When war's afoot, pain and sorrow
Will surely follow
There is no doubt about it
The onlooker sees it all they say,
But there's nothing,
Nothing he can do about it.

See the soldiers, sailors, airmen
On station platforms saying 'Goodbye'
Hear the over-hearty laughter, sense
The latent tear in loved one's eye.

Alas for some, thank God, unknowing,
This really is their last goodbye.

Wave, smile bravely as they go
It's only when they're out of sight
That tears will really start to flow.

If I could stem one single tear
From just one red-rimmed weeping eye,
Or could comfort them and truly say
'You're loved ones are not going to die'.

If I could but stay the hand
That wields the scythe of time
Give back every lost tomorrow
And slay the dogs of war as well.

Give to the earth a lasting peace sublime
There'd be no need for The Bard's 'sweet sorrow'
No need at all for that last farewell.

VE Day

Church bells rang out on VE Day,
Six years of silence broken.

Let's have a party, let's have a ball
But first, a thought, a prayer unspoken
For those young men who answered the call,
Came home with mind or body broken,
And those who never came home at all.