On Ploegsteert memorial in Belgium, no faces show.

Only names carved on slabs

Along curved walls of the imposing colonnade

Impressive, the stone lions that guard.

Eleven thousand names of the multi-ranked

Casualties of war, who share this dubious banner

NO KNOWN GRAVE.

Consider these lives snatched into oblivion

Ripped out of all existence,

Yet, three kilometres north lies Ypres

Once flattened by that same war

Now risen like the Phoenix.

But no fabled bird renews these gallant souls.

Is there a sad irony that they might have believed

They were fighting,

THE WAR TO END ALL WARS?