Life to His Kind Was a Game of Chance – the story of Tom Reilly, an Irish Soldier of Fortune
Adventures sake
Brought the young sons of Erin
Into uniform
Thoughts of great glory
Among shot and shell in hell
Of the battlefield
To return to home
To kisses of loved ones
And relieved mothers
As hero’s of old
Of whom they heard as children
At their mothers knee.
It was not to be
So many fell wounded and dead
The latter lucky.
A few unscathed bar
A shrapnel wound to the leg
A bootload of blood.
Some found love and lust
In Fräuleins welcoming arms
Seduced by victors.
To fight yet again
Same side, a new uniform
Maybe faced their own sons.
Their own flesh and blood
Under enemies high flag
As Germans were raised.
=========================
Hiding maybe the fact
That their fathers they were from
The enemies side
And as proud Aryan
Uniform they wore and fought
For land and for blood.
Germany’s honour
Faith, Fuhrer and flag, they stood
Listened to Hitler
Hiding the fact that
No German were they but were
Half one of the Gael
And with weapons they faced
The fire of the enemy
One who was father
But father does not
Matter to such men of arms
Who fight for Fuhrer
Sometimes I
I think of those two young boys
Raised by grandparents
In a Rhine banks shop
Their mother who died in birth
So the boys could live
To hold guns to fight
And to face their own father
On a field of battle.
Strange… such it is life
Its twists and its turns weave odd
Patterns in lives.