Maps: A Poetry Collection for ABF The Soldiers' Charity

MAPS MARTIN FIGURA

A poetry collection for

The Army’s National Charity

ABF The Soldiers’ Charity

Contents

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12

23

04

13

25

FOREWORD FROM THE CHIEF EXECUTIVE

ABOUT THIS COLLECTION

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SOLDIER SEEN THROUGH SHIELD AFTER PHILIP JONES GRIFFITHS

07 BENEVOLENCE

09

THE SEA FOR STEWART HARRIS

10

MAROON MACHINE

SACRIFICE

15

HURRICANE FOR CHARLES LOUIS

17 TRIGGER & RESERVIST

19

TIME FOR RICK CLEMENT & MAX

BARLEY RAGE FOR JOHN CUTTING

ON WAKING FOR TROY CONNER

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SPITTLE FOR STEWART HARRIS & JOHN CUTTING

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VICTOR ‘TRUE STORIES OF MEN AT WAR’

20

FALLING FOR AL HODGSON

BEAR FOR STEWART HARRIS

11

SLOW MARCH FOR STEWART HARRIS

PREVIOUSLY PUBLISHED POEMS Maroon Machine and Reservist: Previously published in Dr Zeeman’s Catastrophe Machine (Cinnamon Press).

Victor: Previously published in Whistle (Cinnamon Press - new edition) & Arrowhead Press.

It also appeared in Poetry News as winner of the Poetry Society Hamish Canham Prize.

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Maps

A poetry collection

FOREWORD FROM THE CHIEF EXECUTIVE

August 2020

I am pleased to share with you Maps: A Poetry Collection for ABF The Soldiers’ Charity. The poems in this anthology were written by Martin Figura, a former soldier who became the charity’s Poet-inResidence in 2019 to help us mark our 75th anniversary. Dedicated to our beneficiaries and ambassadors, his words capture the service and sacrifice of the Army community, offering a rare insight into the changing face of soldiering since 1944.

I am struck, as I come to write this foreword, by how much the world has changed since 2019. Our country is now in the grip of a global pandemic, with considerable challenges on the horizon. Many of our servicemen and women have found themselves on the frontline of the virus response; performing with consummate skill and professionalism in the most challenging circumstances.

This ability to show courage and resourcefulness in the face of adversity sits at the very heart of soldiering. The poems in this collection traverse conflict and war; physical injury and mental illness; camaraderie and friendship;

transition and recovery. Some are stories of great hardship; offset by the transformative powers of resilience, hope and determination. They are a fitting tribute to the Army community we proudly serve.

I very much hope you enjoy the collection.

MAJOR GENERAL (RET'D) MARTIN RUTLEDGE CB OBE CHIEF EXECUTIVE ABF THE SOLDIERS’ CHARITY

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ABF The Soldiers’ Charity

ABOUT THIS COLLECTION -

I left school at 15 and joined the Army from a care background to be selfsufficient but within a framework. I can’t imagine what else I might have done that would have served me better.

Joining the Army is a big decision when you’re mapping out your life. It’s not an easy choice and isn’t for everyone, but for many they cannot imagine doing anything else. That your ‘map’ could be snatched away in an instant goes with the job, though I can’t imagine this helps should it happen.

Nevertheless, I was given the daunting responsibility of putting into words life-changing experiences that clearly merit poems. I’m better as a poet than I ever was at soldiering. I hope my poems are up to the job and convey the respect I felt in making them. I did my very best and was humbled and honoured to be asked.

Poetry isn’t very widely read, but is often looked to in difficult times.

There’s nothing in my Army career to really warrant a poem, it was for the most part clerical. It’s a little embarrassing to admit, that not once in my twenty-five-year career was I ever in harm’s way. I was never asked to confront the reality of what soldiering expects. I’ve no way of knowing if I’d have ‘measured up’.

MARTIN FIGURA POET

WWW.MARTINFIGURA.CO.UK WWW.MARTINFIGURA-PHOTOGRAPHY.CO.UK 04

Maps

A poetry collection

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ABF The Soldiers’ Charity

After Philip Jones Griffiths: Soldier seen through shield, Northern Ireland 1973

SOLDIER SEEN THROUGH SHIELD Scratched Perspex blunts your face, as if beneath a river’s ice, deadens the scrape of feet, the din from either bank: catcalls, pipes and drums and rifle cracks.

You learnt quickly the distance between the ferry and the Unity Flats, how the past plays out in the slow slide of spittle, the gutter’s piss and blood. You feel a sudden need for the limey odour of chalk dust.

No matter how hard he rubs, each weekday morning your old teacher sees your blanked face in the patina of the blackboard; hears his own assertion that history is necessary, lest we repeat, forget, repeat our mistakes.

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Maps

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A poetry collection

BENEVOLENCE Benevolence is beyond difficult news, beyond the worst of days, patrols the blurred border between good fortune and loss in a high-vis vest, will reach across and gather you in.

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ABF The Soldiers’ Charity

STEWART HARRIS

Stewart Harris served with the Welsh Guards for 13 years. In 2012, while on tour in Afghanistan, a roadside bomb hurled Stewart’s vehicle into a ditch, leaving him with brain damage; the impact of which left him partially sighted and partially deaf. That same year, he also witnessed three of

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his comrades shot dead by an Afghan policeman.

He was later diagnosed with PTSD and found peace and passion in golf. Stewart has received funding support for his family and himself to aid his rehabilitation and is now a passionate ambassador for our charity.

Maps

A poetry collection

THE SEA For Stewart Harris

After school came the slow coastal erosion of self to what was on offer.

The saucy postcards of Rhyl faded in their racks. Stew felt the weight of his grandfather’s medals, dreamt London Kodachrome-bright; to one day stand to attention close enough to see how beautiful the Queen really is.

The Welsh Guards are small town boys reeking of Kiwi Gloss, beeswax and spit; are the deep shine of pageantry; are forged from steel for tough work. A hand reaches and hauls Stew over the assault course’s twelve-foot wall. On the other side there’s no time for air and his heart’s a fire in his chest. Basra has a desert climate and far less rain than Rhyl. Stew’s mum drank her tea, waved him off, wished him love and to have a nice time. Stew prayed

“TO ASK FOR HELP AND BE TOLD ‘YES, THAT’S GOING TO BE FINE’ IS ABSOLUTELY AMAZING. THE WEIGHT OF THE WORLD WAS TAKEN OFF MY SHOULDERS.”

for her sanctuary of innocence.

The Lance Sergeant admitted his fear so, they could too. He taught them how to inject morphine and wait out the storm before the opiate calm.

Stew learned the art of observation, that when covert in a derelict building you must be able to fight your way out – know your exit routes.

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ABF The Soldiers’ Charity

For Stewart Harris

BEAR Betrayal will happily walk with you, knows your patterns, the roof-runs and dead ends of conflict. Conflict will lift you skyward, then lay you down on the broken dirt. Stew woke clean white and wondered if this was hell. The bear in the next bed explained it was Birmingham and over weeks they reminisced, became firm friends. When it was time, the bear came home with him and was too big for the house. The bear blundered about breaking ornaments, cracked its head against the light, sent shadows skittering about the walls. The bear brooded and the children shrank back from its rancid breath which made the bear roar. The rooms of the house became dead ends. One night Stew placed his hand into the bear’s paw and together they walked to the edge of the sea and were the most sorrowful sight the sea had ever seen. The sea took pity and let them step into her low swell.

They clung together while the sea murmured about home until the bear struck out for the moonlit horizon. Stew stood alone on the kitchen floor, water pooled about him. He was so tired, his own undone shoelaces were an unfathomable conundrum.

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Maps

A poetry collection

SLOW MARCH The impact of a two iron is less than a millisecond. The sweetness of the blow, determines the ball’s trajectory and its behaviour when it hits the ground.

Each fairway is a slow march, a confession of sorts, a series of gradually softer blows until the frustrating business is done and the clubs safe in their bag.

The companionship of the bar is built from the shared trials of treacherous bunkers and rough ground; adversity shaped into stories and calm reason.

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ABF The Soldiers’ Charity

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MAROON MACHINE A shove and shout and you’re out in the roar and the next second yanked clear of the line like a doll and the Iron Age hummocky Plain below, a thrown dun cloth in the afternoon glare.

Your boots are 3D and things become clear: Old Sarum’s a cup-ring, Stonehenge a broken mouth, tank-tracks criss-crossing the chalk terrain and its burial mounds like self-harm scars.

This place will take all the grit you possess.

Shouts from Bruneval to Al Basrah echo the corridors, learn them by heart. This beret is all, leave your luggage at the door, etch us into your skin like a blood group tattoo, fall quiet from the sky, hit the ground and roll.

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Maps

-

A poetry collection

SACRIFICE After Genesis 22.2: Then God said, “Take your son, your only son, whom you love — Isaac — and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on a mountain I will show you.”

Let fathers bind their sons to altars, so the wind might winnow the chaff.

Let a million feet trample out a threshing floor.

Let the harvest moon light the hunter’s path.

Let the guns begin again.

Let the earth feed on bone-meal and rain, let fire do its work. *

The ground marks digging men with chalk, the Somme moves gentle and slow. Primroses litter No-Man’s Land, broken trees sprout green buds and men clamber into the uproar of a summer morning.

Some drown in fire, some lie close with the earth and feel it quake, of those some blacken into filth, some crawl, try out sound and scavenge words.

In the quiet that follows starlings cloak the shifted sky. * I am wire tangled into the approximate shape of a man in a fireside chair. At dawn rain broke heavy along the valley, sent sheep bleating to the trees.

If I dream gas as wood-smoke it isn’t so harsh on the throat.

By chapel time, sun spilt through clouds blinding the road.

I am waiting for the mud on my boots to dry.

When still I hear the choir.

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ABF The Soldiers’ Charity

CHARLES LOUIS

Charles Louis served in the Royal Army Ordnance Corps from 1961 to 1973. After retiring to his home country, Dominica, his house was destroyed by Hurricane Maria and he was forced to return to the UK. He slept on his daughter’s sofa for a year but it was difficult for her to accommodate him and her two young children in a two-bedroom flat.

Charles was helped by Stoll, one of our many partner charities, and now has a flat to call his own. We awarded a further grant for household furnishings, turning his new house into a home.

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Maps

For Charles Louis

A poetry collection

HURRICANE The wind will snatch the map from your hand, fling it like an untidy bird into the storm along with the roof from over your head, will make sand of solid ground, disappear the road ahead like a conjuror’s trick.

Rain lifts Charles and his hardwood floor, sets them loose and fearful like flotsam into the road, which is a river, the first of many rivers. Trouble is a river with the bridges washed away; a stadium is a kind of ship; a daughter’s sofa an ocean away, a harbour of sorts.

One small wrong word by an official on a form denies a good man’s citizenship, thieves his dignity, leaves him on that sofa in a crowded house for years. Charles counts back more than forty years, to eight digits to find he’s not forgotten, soon finds himself in possession of a new paradise near a river.

The first pale light breaks through plane trees onto Westminster pavements as Charles walks his daily miles. He heads north past the Houses of Parliament, crosses the Thames then back again at Vauxhall to an earned day. On occasions he starts southwards, if it please him.

“IT WAS LIKE I FOUND MY PARADISE.”

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ABF The Soldiers’ Charity

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Maps

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A poetry collection

TRIGGER

A crescent moon,

a gleam of steel in the night sky.

Civvy Street

is another country, can take some getting used to, is seemingly unaware of the British Army’s core doctrine of Land Operations, yet is a complex and dynamic environment where the enemy, if one exists, is covert, may be wearing your own dark coat.

Trauma is a wound

hardened to an invisible scar, insensitive to touch, a parade of ghosts, is hiding in a crowd or at the back of a cupboard, has many masks and scents, is a fickle fish curling on your palm.

An open palm

is already the beginning of a

RESERVIST

proposal, a plea for another open palm, a lifeline, salvation

The fusted kit bag, Two Four Two Seven

held up to a mirror.

Double Two Three Four Private Figura in cracked white paint on its flank,

Welfare is

drops from the attic, stands upright

your own self, a blessing

for a moment before the kick of gravity

returned for you, to see you

sends it down the stairs to lie prone

safe down from the mountain.

on the hall carpet.

Trust is wary,

The reek of gun-oil,

will, given time put its heart

knees and elbows scuffed by chalky

on its sleeve, will listen always, but

South Downs grit, a white patch

cannot promise not to sometimes

pasted to a plywood man’s chest,

take the piss, to say - ‘If you can’t

the thin-lipped Captain’s command,

stand a joke, then you shouldn’t

the crack to cheekbone as the shock

have joined’.

echoes back and the pitted sand dances.

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ABF The Soldiers’ Charity

RICK CLEMENT Rick Clement joined the Army just before his 17th birthday.

After 16 years of service in the Duke of Lancaster’s Regiment, he was one month into his first tour of Afghanistan when he stepped on an IED. He lost both his legs and much of his right arm, which had to be reattached.

Our charity helped provide a specialist wheelchair and bathroom adaptations to his home so he can live a fully independent life with his dog, Max.

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Maps

For Rick Clement and Max

A poetry collection

TIME

The meds trolley wheels

have the rotary thum-thum of a landed helicopter, the downdraft pinning you to the bed.

Polystyrene ceiling tiles

patiently wait for all you have on your mind.

Time is where

the river breaches, spills wide and slow, its alluvial music a drifting whisper. You wait for the banks to close in and deepen again, wait

for the low

rumble echo of the gorge to collect itself into a roar a bouldered rush through the steep impenetrable nature of itself.

Rick and Max

(bulldog breed) are three wheels four legs mobile are all terrain all weathers shifting some along the wide path through the park are close to airborne will make the beach even before the promenade shutters clatter up.

Rick and Max

are drawn to the shingle’s grind by the same moon as the sea, meet it at the shifting edge of things

“THE FUNDING FROM THE CHARITY HAS MADE A MASSIVE DIFFERENCE TO MY LIFE.” 19

ABF The Soldiers’ Charity

For Al Hodgson

FALLING

To sit buffeted

in the wind-noise on the metal lip and look down at where you where moments before

its oxygen rich

capillary roads and flattened contours and leap.

Gravity will

let you down my friend that’s its job.

Al explains

There’s fear,

if an explanation is needed, (which

and there’s control and there’s

Al says, it isn’t)

camaraderie!

sky-diving

is like

is being all things equal, has no

this:

disability category just the fall,

Being airborne

then the sudden illusion of

When you jump out of a plane,

upwards, followed

it’s not an exit

by the ground’s slow delivery, all that’s

it’s an entrance.

holding you is the rushing wind and billowing silk.

It’s an entrance

into a completely different world.

Al has the look

of an action hero and gold medals to prove it. Al fell for Pixie, married her in a hot air balloon five thousand five hundred feet above Arizona, may even have written her a poem?

I dare you to ask him.

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Maps

A poetry collection

In 1992, Al Hodgson was injured by an IRA bomb while serving as a 21-year-old Paratrooper in Northern Ireland. He lost his left leg below the knee and his right leg beneath the hip.

Al was introduced to tandem skydiving by a member of the Red Devils Parachute Display Team and soon found himself competing for Britain in freestyle skydiving. Our charity gave funding assistance with his training costs. In 2006, he married fellow skydiver, Pixie, in a hot-air balloon before leaping out of the basket with her at 5,500ft.

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ABF The Soldiers’ Charity

JOHN CUTTING

John Cutting served in the Royal Engineers from 1970 to 1974. At 18 years old, he was deployed on backto-back tours of Northern Ireland at the height of The Troubles.

For years, he didn’t realise that he was suffering from PTSD but with the help of Finchale, one of our many partner charities, he was able to begin recovering from deep-seated, long-term trauma. He found healing in his love for art and has gone on to study for a Fine Art degree at Teeside University.

Our charity granted a bursary to help with his studies.

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Maps

For John Cutting

A poetry collection

BARLEY RAGE John closely observed the emotional intelligence of horses, their demeanour in expressing rage and stress: hackled mane, drawn-back teeth, pricked ears and twisted brute necks.

John is pulled apart, is horseshoes scattered about the garage floor. To prepare the surface he oxidises with barley malt vinegar before shot blasting back to raw steel.

He applies intense heat, is driven by instinct and urgency. Finally, he applies the balm of softened beeswax with a cloth, is tender and patient. This is a horse in a million very different to any found in a book - a beast created from recycled material and struggle.

A reclamation – a Gipsy Cob, to look you in the eye most days, to shoulder and to haul.

“IT’S GIVEN ME A NEW LIFE WHICH ENABLES ME TO COPE WITH THE OLD ONE.”

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ABF The Soldiers’ Charity

TROY CONNER

Armed Forces Para-Snowsport Team

Troy Conner served with the 1st Battalion, Parachute Regiment and was the only survivor of an IED explosion. After suffering a head injury, Troy had to leave the Army in 2011 but has since become a motivational speaker, sharing his story of survival, mental health, resilience and the road to recovery.

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Maps

For Troy Conner

A poetry collection

ON WAKING On waking, the illusion of weightless suspension is fallen to the ground; your skull is the cracked snow globe of a beautiful but war-torn country. There’s no trace of you in this half-remembered wilderness.

To think is to scratch at a window not able to recognise the reflection; is to have to will your limbs to move; to conjure up your voice.

When blizzard and mist give, immutable peaks appear as comrades: Whernside, Ingleborough, Pen-y-ghent. Their millstone grit wakes your loyalty, instinct commands you go there.

On their ridgeway the ferocious wind speaks through you, your dutiful hope and sorrow.

“I FEEL I WAS BORN A SOLDIER.”

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ABF The Soldiers’ Charity

For Stewart Harris and John Cutting

SPITTLE Spittle is not a bullet or an IED, cannot rip through you.

Spittle has its own sweet unforgettable scent.

Spittle comes with fury infused over centuries.

Spittle is every face that ever hated you, is more than words.

Spittle waits quietly for night, never leaves – is a wound.

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Maps

‘True Stories of Men at War’

A poetry collection

VICTOR As fathers stroll home from work there is no birdsong and the November light is all but gone.

Small boys run amok in avenues, take cover behind privet hedges the smell of cordite, heavy in the air.

Over the traffic, the sound of battle: grenades whistling overhead, the sporadic rattle of toy guns from doorways.

At tea time, those whose turn it is break cover, make a zigzagging run for it shouting - ACHTUNG ACHTUNG. They go down in a hail of bullets, competing for the most dramatic death.

The pavement is so littered with Germans the men must pick a way through to reach their gates and take their sons down paths into quiet houses.

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REGISTERED OFFICE Mountbarrow House 6–20 Elizabeth Street London SW1W 9RB TELEPHONE: 020 7901 8900 EMAIL: info@soldierscharity.org WEBSITE: www.soldierscharity.org ABF The Soldiers’ Charity is a registered charity in England and Wales (1146420), in Scotland (SC039189) and registered as a company limited by guarantee in England and Wales (07974609).

A poetry collection for

The Army’s National Charity

ABF The Soldiers’ Charity