In Competition No. 2423 you were invited to write a poem in the voice of a fed-up soldier, of any country or date, far from home.
I was apprehensive that most of you would use this invitation to vent your feelings about the unhappy war in Iraq, but I was pleasantly surprised by the variety in time and space of your fractious servicemen (there was only one servicewoman) — a tribesman from the steppes bored in Rome, a redcoat on St Helena after Napoleon’s death, a conscript from Clerkenwell stuck in Wales during Edward I’s campaign, a French quartermaster in Egypt with Napoleon, a German soldier not enjoying Stalingrad…. The prizewinners, printed below, are awarded £25 each, and Keith Norman takes the bonus fiver. A happy new year to you all.
As a member of a hand-picked fighting force
You’ll find no keener man than me.
Yet
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