The Battle of the Nek: A Short War Poem.

The Battle of the Nek

The order was given,
For us to go over.
We didn’t stand tall,
Or shoulder to shoulder,
We knew we would die,
That was for sure,
Why were we dying like this in the war?

We were just scapegoats,
No chance for survival,
We were just decoys
For Great Britain’s arrival.

How many we lost?
How many went over?
The figures remain,
The same as each other.

Those who survived?
Of a small number.
Most of our men,
In the deepest slumber.

How could they do that?
Make us go to our death,
Like cows we were slaughtered,
None left to attest.

“Fight for your country”,
Was on all the posters,
We fought for the Brits,
With the dust on their holsters.

The battle was over,
The British had come,
But, in this war,
Who really had won?

By Khe Sahn

Stanzas :

They are all different lengths and sort of contained onto itself individually. The nicest poetry has stanzas the work alone and together at the same time. It's very hard to get done but when you do, cha-ching! You have yourself a winner.
My personal favourite stanza:

The battle was over,
The British had come,
But, in this war,
Who really had won?

Flow :

The flow is a little bit choppy throughout the poem. It flows nicely throughout most of the poem but then you throw it away when you can't find the word to make it work nicely. That's a bit of a shame though, it could be very nice if the words matched up more smoothly. Think of a poem as a puzzle, if one puzzle piece is lost you can't force another one in its place.

I loved the message though. Great one!
This is very nice poem has a lot of potential. Keep writing!

Kamas

I'm a total history nerd, but not much of a poet. I therefore, like the topic a lot. I can't decide, though, if it was about the French during World War II, or something else. Maybe you need to somehow specify a bit more. I also like the fact that it rhymes. A lot of good poetry doesn't, but there's something nice about poems that do. It's more like a song than randomly assorted words. Keep up the good work!

Khe Sahn wrote:We didn’t stand tall,
Or shoulder to shoulder,

This really isn't that bad but it sounds a tiny bit forced here, rhyme wise.

Khe Sahn wrote:We were just scapegoats,
No chance for survival,
We were just decoys
For Great Britain’s arrival.

I liked the repetition here.

Khe Sahn wrote:How many we lost?
How many went over?
The figures remain,
The same as each other.

Same as above, the last line sounds a little bit forced.
Now if your sitting there thinking 'but it just flowed out like that naturally, I hardly thought about my rhyme scheme at all' or something, then that's perfectly fine but if you were like, 'oh man, I need my rhyme scheme to stay intact so what word can I put in here?' than that's a little less good but it's not like you're rhyming cat to hat or something. (Hopefully that made sense!)

Khe Sahn wrote:Most of our men,
In the deepest slumber.

Even though it's a broken up sentence it's still a sentence and 'most of our men in the deepest slumber' doesn't really sound right to me. I think you should put in an 'are' before the 'in'.

I absolutely loved the rest of this.
I think this poem is really well done. It's an interesting topic, I don't really know anything about the Battle of Nek (it was a real battle right? ) and you presented it in a really good, creative way.
The rhyming and rhythm was really good. You didn't get to rhymey-rhymey but you had a rhyme scheme which is awesome. (I see a lot of people, especially in lyrics try to stick to a rhyme scheme and then get stuck for words and then it gets all rhymey-rhymey like rhyming 'shoe' to 'new' or something boring like that. )
Gold star for you and I really hope this review was somewhat helpful

-Carly

Thanks guys, much appreciated!
And it's not about the French, its about the Australians at Gallipoli good guess though!