Build (In memory of my Grandpa, Walter Martin, Royal Engineers, Ypres 1917)

We can't build the future

If we don't remember the past.

Breathing

14 times a minute.

Breathing in our atmosphere.

850,000 men 

breathing

in a field in Belgium.

Breathing

through their  inadequate gas masks.

Breathing

in poison.

Walter

was there,

breathing. 

His lungs filling 

with mustard gas.

He'd only been 

breathing 

for 19 years.

He kept breathing.

But he didn't 

hear my 

first breath. 

We can't build the future 

if we don't remember the past.