This is my attempt at a poem in the voice of my grandfather, Jim Prendeville. He was
born in 1888 in North Kerry and worked as a farm and bog labourer. He went to
work in the Welsh mines and then enlisted in the British Army. He saw a lot of
front line action and was wounded in 1917. When I was a boy he lived with us
for a few years before his death and he told me lots of stories, including how
he killed a German soldier at close quarters while on sentry duty. When he was
taking off his shirt and going to bed at night, my brother and I would
sometimes ask him to show us the big indentation in his upper back where the
shell had hit him. He was born into poverty and worked hard to make a living. I believe he had some comfort and happiness with us in his final years.
Jim Prendeville
I was a tall man in the
Lixnaw bog
Girls giggling
Across billy cans of
tea
I was a tall man bent
over
In the mines of the
Rhondda
Coal was almost as mean
as turf
I was a tall man the
day I enlisted
Got a photograph done
A private standing like
a captain
I was on my knees
The night that poor
German lad
Ran onto my bayonet
I held my head up in
Flanders
Eating plum duff from a
tin
Christmas Day 1916
I was too fucking tall
The day the whizz bang
nearly
Took the shoulder off
me
I stood in the bog
again
Much later
Never the same at all
