To the Foresters of the Glorious Glosters
by Maggie Clutterbuck
Commissioned for the Ceremony of Dedication 24 April 2026

You could not forget yet we hope time

helped your battle in and out.

Your castles of bravery in the numbers spilled,

a foreign land without a name to spare,

with care they called it Gloster Hill.

Soldiers flooded in like a tsunami,

enemy waves in the valley

carried thousands through,

and you, without food and water,

battled on.

Together you Foresters fought,

together a different battle.

Cruel, inhuman, yet you made a home

of each other.

You whose place was in the leaves and trees,

whose blood only flowed

in the streams of the dean.

Your bodies home, came home

broken like autumn bracken,

minds, too, brittle and fragile.

You were brought back to life by the oak and beech,

spring forever your friend

as it dulled into winter

and splintered into fronds.

You, brave men, are here with us still,

your memories linger late

at the welcome gate to freedom.

You are mirrored in time

as you passed and pass through the arches

of your souls.