In Crispy Sheets We Lay

Caring not if night or day,

Tended by a kindly nurse,

When everything was worse,

Our thoughts were far away,

With our comrades left behind,

In the dirt and grime,

And the terror of it all,

While in crispy sheets we lay.

Leslie Loader

Polly Clark, Daily Echo writer-in-residence, says: "Leslie served in the Army during the Second World War. He says: 'There can be no greater contrast than between the battlefield with its filth, terror and insecurity and the kindness and security of a military hospital.'

"This poem is about that contrast."