A poem inspired by our recent tour of the Danube from Budapest to Bucharest with Emerald Waterways www.emeraldwaterways.com, with lectures from BBC correspondents Martin Bell, John Simpson and Nick Thorpe.

“All Wars are the Worst War”

(Sergeant Andy Mason of the Desert Rats)*

The sniper dives behind a shattered door frame,
disappearing into long shadows of waiting.
Time travels both fast and slow
within the confines of his battle.

The windows of the nearby Hotel Dunav are being shot
window by window, floor by floor,
in the concrete Communist block skyscraper
towering over Vukovar’s harbour.

Houses stand bombed and broken.
A neighbourhood street where mothers had cooked,
children had played, grandparents visited,
now unrecognisable.  A tumble of jagged bricks and breezeblock.

There’s nowhere to run.  Every corner covered,
the wide wild fields of wheat booby-trapped with landmines.
He thinks he is fighting for justice, territory, belief.
He has not lived sufficient years to realize he’s a political pawn.

A mortar blasts and rocks his cover.
He ducks into darkness in the shelled ruin of a shop,
aims his gun into the gloom to discover a fighter
sheltering under the counter, teeth chattering, stupefied in terror.

Snipers firing, snipers being slaughtered, so many being maimed.
No orders reach them.  Fear takes over.
Their young-man bravado seeps into the blackness of their hearts,
the futility of war murdering them both in its own way.