Remembrance Sunday comes round again, and this week I offer one of my own poems on the subject. Not being born until 1944 I have, of course, no memory of the Second World War, let alone the First, but my mother who was born in 1908 told me stories of both, and this one, of a young soldier who was billeted with her family for a while before being sent out to the trenches in the Great War, haunted me for years until I finally made what offering I could to his shade.

Remembering Dido

They never came back, the young men
Billeted with my grandmother in the Great War
At 40, Church Road, Watford on their way to the Front.
My mother forgot their names, she was only six
And they were too many. One, though, she remembered:
Dido, they called him, who was handsome and merry-hearted,
Who called her Pinky, who teased her about her dolls,
Who tossed her up to the ceiling and caught her again
In strong young cricketer’s arms; who died, they heard,
Bullet-riddled, throwing grenades, running forward
Cheering the others on, like a boy at play.
My mother was the last, I think, who knew him,
And she is dead now too. His name was Dido.

David Sutton