Something for Anzac day

I got a short term subscription to a forces records site so I could do some research on the WWI dead commemorated in our local churches. Of course, I get easily side tracked. In my other identity I was looking up Archie Kennedys and posted about a young Australian one, which was clearly my subconscious at work as it's Anzac Day today.

Then I set about the Stewarts, but there's loads of them so I'll get back to you on that. There are fewer Coppersmiths, in fact only four recorded, and I think that actually boils down to just two people - R Coppersmith, a private in the Royal Army Medical Corps, and Raymond Patrick Coppersmith, who (appropriate to the day, again) was in the New Zealand Air Force. He was killed in July 1942, flying in a Wellington, and is remembered on the Runnymede memorial.

So, for the day:

Cold Portland stone.
A badge. A rank. A name. An age.
Too young. Always too young.

Red poppy on white marble.
Lest we forget.
Forget the gas and the trench foot and the slow dying by degrees and the firing squad at dawn.

Carved names under a soaring cross.
Somebody’s son. Somebody’s sweetheart.

A familiar whistle listened for but no longer heard.
An empty chair at the table.