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Rated: E · Other · History · #1960477
The last man who played a football game during the 1914 Christmas truce has died.
Sorry, I've had this sitting in my files for ages. very few people have seen it so I decided hang it out for comment. I love poetry and wish I could write it as well as some of you... This is one of the few that I find worthy of calling it a poem.

This poem was first conceived when Albert Felstead, the last man who played football during the Christmas Truce(1914) passed away in 2005 at the age of 104. I was imagining that all those who participated in the famous football game that took place between the trenches on Christmas day were waiting in the afterlife for the last man to join them so they could resume the game again.


Full time is called at last
The final player is no more.
All the ghosts of no mans land
Will celebrate the final score
As the last man leaves his mortal
Shell to walk on heavens pitch,
Where old friends and former foe
Wait to play the game once more.

The field is ruled with poppies red,
The ball as golden as the sun.
Deaths ditch is lined with Edelweiss
And Angels sing The New Jerusalem,
To celebrate that glorious day
When they laid down bayonet and gun
And ran upon a battlefield
to play footy just for fun.
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