To those I’ve wronged, I bow my head
I’ll cover your graves with flowers and life
I know you wanted me dead instead
My sins cut like a sharpened knife
I can’t forget the lives I stained
For they are gone and I grieve their loss
Fire turns treacherous if not trained
And thus I hang on Jerusalem’s cross
The faces of the men I send to their death
Haunt my nightmares once I close my eyes
The burning red flames of my last breath
An answer to their endless cries
And with that breath I free my soul
It flees my skin and in the sky it’ll dance
Enjoying life before the end of it all
Perhaps to be given a second chance
Sir Winston Churchill was the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1940 to 1945 and later from 1951 up till 1955. At this time he was a member of the Conservative Party.
He considered Gallipoli the greatest tragedy of his political career (which is what the poem describes). As Britain’s lord of admiralty (secretary of the navy), he made the fateful decision to attack Turkey on its Dardanelles coast, specifically at Gallipoli during the early days of the First World War. The failed campaign led to the humiliation of the British. Churchill was dismissed from his cabinet position, excluded from the War Council, and allowed no hand in the further conduct and administration of the war.
