Poem ~ 'Save Our Skins' - Saturday, 18 December 1915 - Sunday, 19 December 1915

Source: File: Advert - Selfridge’s Gauntlets. peg, [online] Available at: <http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ww1-archive/12052408/Daily-Telegraph-December-18-1915.html> Accessed: 19 December 2015].

From what was a simple innovation

Of the 19th century, of wire lengths

That held regular twists of barbs -

To become frontline war defences.

The use of barbed wire, turned

Onto human livestock, to defend

And prevent enemy advancement;

By injuries inflicted by twists of metal.

Not just to the opposing invader,

But for those men of wiring parties,

Sent to lay out the passive weapon -

Came needs of ways to handle sharps.

In firms that set out to make money

Through war, advanced the Tommy's

Kit - the SOS need came by Selfridges

To 'Save Our Skin' in shape of gauntlets.

The appeal of practicalities for those

Sappers sent out to fix entanglements,

Informed the xmas gift shopper that such

Gauntlets were needed on darkest nights.

Dangers were fingers or hands likely
to be badly torn - safety was advertised

In an image of a gauntleted fist, solidly 

Clasping dangerous spikes of such wire.

For 5/- a pair; protection for a price.

In a depiction of a private funded war;

Reality should been for army gauntlets 
Issues, to all the wire and sapper parties.

by Jamie Mann.

Anon.,1915. Advert - He Needs Protection Against Barbed Wire. The Daily Telegraph, [online] 18 December. P.4. Col.1-3. Available at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ww1-archive/12052408/Daily-Telegraph-December-18-1915.html [Accessed: 18 December 2015].

Mann, J., 2015. 100 years Ago - Poems by Jamie Mann. [letter] (Personal communication, 18 December 2015). 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ww1-archive/12052408/Daily-Telegraph-December-18-1915.html

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