Red Flowers

Red flowers glowed that beautiful day.
The day the war came and took the boys away.
The girls wore red flowers in their hair
and threw red flowers in the air,
to the boys going over there.
Red flowers grew in the fields of war
until the bombs fell and they were no more.
The red flowers lived until the winter wind.
The deathly wind in the trenches chilled.
With the spring red flowers appeared,
red flowers growing among the dead.
In the summer red flowers were crushed
as to their deaths young boys rushed.
Red flowers on the graves of the boys,
of the boys who hurried off to war,
of the boys who wished they had stayed behind.
Red flowers grew and died each year,
each year of the  bloody war.
Then one day was heard the final blast
and the boys came home at last.
Red flowers where thrown to the boys,
old men returning  from the war.
Red  flowers were placed on the stones
of the boys who died too young,
of the boys for whom life had just begun,
of the boys for whom this world is no more.
Now every year with solemn review
we remember these young boys
and recall their gentle ways
and remember each and every name.
Those who never grew old.
Those who went off to war
and the red flowers that they wore.