Flashback

You who now lay safely dead live forever in my head,
I wake up shouting in the dark sweat soaked with memories clear and stark,
Confronted on that jungle track all you did was stare right back,
Eyes like saucers plain to see you were terrified just like me,
You were barely seventeen, all your comrades dead or fled,

We stood there filled with mutual dread.

I point at your rifle “Dallam” I scream but you don’t put it down, and cling to it as in a dream,
What the hell? You know the rule drop it now you bloody fool,
You move at last but far too fast and straight at you I fire a blast,
I hit you squarely in the gut as you were handing me your rifle butt!

You lie and writhe on the jungle floor your young life soon to be no more.
Before you go you stare at me, accusingly, the unasked question in your eye, why?
“Emah. Emah” you call your mother, but she can’t help you now my brother,
Oh Jesus Christ! What have I done? You were handing me your gun!
It doesn’t matter comrades said just another of the bastards dead.

I shake it off with the ease of youth but deep inside I know the truth,
What I did was just not right and so you haunt me in the night.
Yes you who now lay safely dead will live forever in my head.

Damn you!