Woods Of Darney - Richard Thompson

I found your picture in a corporal’s pocket

His cold fingers still pressed it to his chest

Sniper’s bullet took his eyes and his breath away

Now he lies out in the forest with the rest

You looked shy in your grandmother’s wedding dress

Feet set wide like a farm girl stands

Too young to love and too young to lose

In a cracked picture frame in a dead man’s hands

I kept it with me for the luck, for the magic

Maybe fate wouldn’t strike in the same place twice

But something stirred and I dared to dream of you

And I knew I’d look for you if I should survive

Whe we stood down at last it was easy to find you

And mine was the shoulder you cried on that day

Just an old comrade doing his duty

Bringing the news from the woods of Darney

When I showed you the picture, perhaps I felt jealousy

As your tears welled up with each reminisce

And my hands may be rougher and my tongue may be coarser

But I knew I could give you a love good as his

Now we lie in the darkness together

Often we lie without speaking this way

As you stare in the dark do you see your young corporal

Who never came back from the woods of Darney

Is it him that you see when we make love together?

Is it him that you see when war fills the sky?

Was he there as you stood in your grandmother’s wedding dress

As we made our own vows, you and I?

Now the bugle calls, they say this is the big one

A curse on the life of a soldier, you say

But don’t you know that’s a soldier’s small comfort

For the bugle to sound, and to hear, and obey

And I’ll carry your picture, the one that he carried

I’ll wear your innocence and take my chance

On a frozen field, in a far-flung war

To win back what we lost in a field in France

And it’s many a soldier who goes into battle

Your corporal and I, we just hear and obey

Perhaps we’ll lie in the darkness together

With your love to bind us, in the woods of Darney