Jake Hartley, Killed in a

Warrior Armoured Vehicle

What quirk of luck resulted in that tilt of head

Before the camera clicked?  What circumstance

Made Jake do that slight slant, add tad of dread

Or sadness to that handsome face, askance

At just the moment when the lens captured

His solemn, sweet green eyes?  He can’t have known

His fate before the Taliban raptured

His square-jawed beauty, lifted that jaw bone

To that slight immortality given

By mentions in the news, television

First and then the Web, that jaw-bone riven

By shrapnel from exploding derision.

..An ear sticks out, a gentle pink here in

….His portrait.  Christ whispers there, “War is sin.”

British soldier from Huddersfield Jake Hartley