The Queen’s Tank Corps
Stands on its plinth
In Catterick Camp:
Once a place of training
And now a housing estate –
Accommodation for
Prisoners or immigrants.

Where once soldiers trained
And left to join regiments;
Where ‘tanks’ lived in garages
And rumbled along roads
And across country,
It is all built on.

Regiments amalgamated
As successive Governments
Cut back on budgets.
When they ran out of regiments,
They amalgamated squadrons
And troops and platoons.

Cut back on support services:
No more medics,
No more engineers,
No more artillery,
No more ammunition,
No more armour,
No more flak jackets,
No more fighters.

Fight the Government’s wars
As untrained yobs
Exchanging rocks and insults.
The Government’s Budget is satisfied,
Close the prisons and put them to war.

The Queen’s Tank Corps
Rusts on its plinth:
No engine,
No maintenance,
No breech,
No block,
Tracks rusted solid
And a pipe in place of a gun.

Everything is amalgamated,
Everything is closed,
The account books are shut
And there are no soldiers.

The Government still starts wars
And Group 4’s ‘volunteers’
March from their prisons,
Fulfilling a Social Contract?