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Looking Back.....

.....to June 1987

In this issue, the winning song from the Hindley Song Writing Contest held at the Worthington Hotel, Market Street, Hindley on the 19th May 1987 was published. 

The judges - Richard Grainger, Mike Billington, John Howarth and Nigel Firth - praised the high standard of entries and made the difficult decision of awarding the first prize to Alun Rhys Jones for his song "Lest We Forget" - A song for the 70th Anniversary of Passchendale (1987)

If I just close my eyes,  I remember the day Lord Kitchener called us to go

And at seventeen years I joined brave volunteers - what else was a young man to do

My father recounted his own glory years as he wore medal ribbons with pride

But I had no quarrel with Fritz but I knew it was not up to me to decide to decide

It was not up to me to decide

On the day I joined up we were cheered by the crowd, all heroes for heeding the call.

The holiday atmosphere banished the fears about how many of us would fall

But the band it played on as we boarded the train and we took the King's shilling each one.

And every man there shared the same silent fear that before very long he'd be gone he'd be gone

That before very long he'd be gone

Each evening at home when the table was set an empty chair waited for me

To my younger brothers, a hero was I, firing guns far away 'cross the sea

But the "war to end wars" was a sordid affair - in the trenches, the blood and the gore

And a bloody great shell blew my mates all to hell and I cried what the hell's all this for, dear God

And I just couldn't take any more

Although I came home things were never the same and the nightmares went on in my head.

A pension was something I never had planned, Oh, and too many friends of mine dead

When I count up the poppies on Passchendale's fields for the hundreds of thousands of men

I'm told to rest easy, 'cause one thing's for sure that it never will happen again, so they say

That it surely can't happen again

We got the occasional poem sent in as well - in Lancashire dialect for good measure! - Let's go back 5 years to June 1982 and read about 'Owd 'Ercules'

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