Boom, boom, go the sounding of the guns.

Ink clutched notes run mix'd with tears of home; white cheeks flecked with limbless dirt. Above a string of 'copters.

Earth's trench'd sewers freeze with the ceasing of the drum. We prepare.

Some flee and are shot.

At home the cowards sing hymns of peace, but in't th'thick of it there I stand.

On the pulpit, rifle in hand, thinking of youth's summer - young still - wondering how flew we sinners to death's other land.

At home the brave speak of conflict's hope, but more gunpowder on seats sit there than here.

(Queer!)

And burried in the dun of it, in this Slavic waste, no sun rises.

We hollow men, we few, stricken with weeping for the safe comfort not of shells and missiles but the priestly pew of friend's faces.

Behind us hang our traitors, rats gnawing at soles.

And in th'front, strewn row upon row are fields of black with barbed wire sewn.

"We'll take them this time lads. On my whistle we march. Ready company. Hold!"

We hold, and in the lifeless silence above there clings a flock of drones bearing Christ's shrapnel.

"Hold"

We hold.

The banshee of the whistle explodes, and all worldly repose goes screaming into the abyss.

The drum, the drum. Can you hear the drum?

England prepares, as once more we're not done.