Keith William (Bill) YOUNG
This would you believe, is me on final leave.
Dressed ready for adventure in khaki weave
Raring to go with the wide world at my feet
As I planned on how to put time to defeat
To those long ago days that once were mine
Though tangled in places in others worn fine
Their up's and down's, their give and take.
Your word excepted on a firm hand shake.
I was so fortunate in meeting the men I did
The mates who made a man from a kid
Who taught me how to take life on the chin
And to except the consequences with a grin
Well those days have gone, have passed away
As I will too, but not yet, not until another day.
POW POEMS
By Bill YOUNG
Bill Young has written many poems about life experiences and about his personal thoughts and observations. From his hundred's of poems the following selection relates specifically to his experiences as a Prisoner of War.
© 2006, Bill Young. All rights reserved.
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Water Bottles....Four
Tin Plates.........Three
A name on a dixie
That's hard to see.
Buckles and Badges,
A battered pannikan;
Final inventory
At Sandakan
THE TEARDROP PEARL
The passing years do not erase
Scars from horrendous days
By black hearted samurai
With barbarous ways
Yet Time's layered swirl,
Flowed to en-curl.
Such bitter memories
Within a priceless pearl
Hardened in the fires of war,
Prison camps from Singapore.
A jewel was shaped; it shines,
For men who are no more.
We got to Bukit Timah out of food and ammo, when -
We found the place full of little yellow men
Japs! With tanks all over the terrain
So we dived for the shelter of a roadside drain
Hushed we crouched with scarcely a sigh
As a flare rose up and lit the surrounding sky
When the night returned we went off quick
Into a Dark Age, three and a half years thick
A PLACE OF MASSACRE
Scratch beneath the layers of those years
Seek to find the reasons for the tears
Unearth splintered bones, and rotting gear
Uncovered, the horror of massacre appears
ODE TO OUTRAM ROAD PRISON
What sad stories those walls could tell
The tortured memories of a living hell
Crushed beneath the weight of years
Ghostly sighs from each phantom cell
FINGERED, OUT AT THE AIRFIELD
The moving finger points
And having pointed
You hope to God it wasn't you
The Bastard has anointed.
STILL - IT STANDS AT SANDAKAN
The boiler's dry, the fire's out
The years have laid the ghosts about
With only now and then a sigh
A whisper from the past of - Why?
JAP SICK PARADE
You no unwell
You sound as bell
You go to work,
Or go to hell.
You no sick, he cried
You bad man, you lied
Off with you to work
So he did - and died.
ON SINGAPORE ISLAND; A LONELY GRAVE
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