ABPA - Australian Bush Poets Association

This was written by Sapper Victor Bower Jacklin , during the 1914 1918 WAR


This was found in his effects after his death tucked inside a letter he had written home to his parents.
He was my Grandfather and served with the Royal Engineers in France.






A FORGOTTEN LETTER




Don’t go to the pictures or concert hall but stay in your billet tonight
Deny yourself to the pals that call and a good long letter write.
Write to the sad, sad ones at home, who sit when the day is done
in the evening twilight cold and grey and dream of the absent one.

Don’t selfishly scribble ‘excuse my haste I’ve little time to write',
lest their anxious hearts should yearn as they think of many a bygone night
when they lost their needed sleep and rest and every breath was a prayer
that God should keep their only son through life in his tender care.

Don’t let them feel that you have no need of their love and counsel wise
for the heart grows very sensitive when sorrow has dimmed your eyes.
Remember comrades your Mothers words as you entered the ranks with delight.
‘Good Bye and God bless you my brave, brave boy and don’t forget to write’.

Now I wonder if ever you give a thought as with comrades you daily unite.
to the anxious suspense that you might have caused by neglecting that letter to write.
I know ‘tis well to have comrades true who make your pleasures gay,
but they have but half the thoughts for you that your Mother has today.

So tell them what you intend to do, let them and your pleasures wait
lest the letter for which your Mother has longed be a day or an hour too late.
For with loving heart she waits at home with cheeks tear stained and white,
longing to hear from her soldier son who perhaps has forgotten to write.

V G B Jacklin ©



Maureen Clifford 04/11

A beautiful, thoughtful poem Maureen. Thanks for posting it. You must be a chip off the old block.

Heather

Yeah sounds like you Maureen,

Thanks

Bob

Magic poem.
Don't want to tell war stories but can relate to this poem and its content one hundred per cent.
Till I went away never knew letters were so important to nourish one's soul. Used to wait with great anxiety for the mail call everyday and hope that I received a letter.
Shortly after this realization came the idea that perhaps my mother and father might like to receive a regular letter from their son serving in Vietnam.
Many years later I was told how important and much desired those letters were.

Showed Mum your comments folks and she was chuffed that I had put her Dad's poem up on the site - she just turned 87 last month.

I might just be a chip off the old bloke Heather, I like to think so - I have a couple of Granddads poems, but according to Mum he wrote many more - he was a prolific writer but no one in the family back in UK have any idea what happened to them or to any of his effects in that line - possibly thrown away when they moved my Gran into a nursing home. And so there the story sadly ends.

He was a journalist and editor of the Middlesex Chronicle for many years prior to his death and only in his early sixties when he died.

Cheers

Maureen

That's really sad and a great loss that you don't have those poems Maureen.

Heather

Maureen you are lucky to have what you did get sometimes others just do not value such things.


Bob

Just received in the mail today some papers from the UK including 3 more of Granddads poems - all military based. I have posted them separately under the heading. Mail from the Trenches

Can't tell you how excited I was to receive this gift. There are also two more poems but I don't thin??? they are his but rather something he fancied and kept. There is also a tongue in cheek letter to the Taxation Department that I presume he wrote.

Also discovered a Christmas story . A surprisingly good short story - as well as an editorial.

Today is a bonzer day

Cheers

Maureen