England in the time of his boyhood was a cold and colourless country. They had seen to that, the Autumn Men. They who had been lifted high, the old men of his country and other countries, who in the autumn of their years, reflecting on the unfulfilled promise of their youth, and their failures as yet unredeemed, feeling as any old man adrift alone on a small boat, sails broken, oars lost, swept hopelessly onward towards the deafening roar of the approaching weir, might feel, decided that too few had sweetly and honourably been called. So call out the young men, wide-eyed and brave of heart, to don uniform, bid sweethearts farewell and forfeit their future. And murder in the name of God. Until they too are harvested 'neath the Autumn Men's sickle. And the lark song is stilled as passing bells are heard anew. ------------ No longer could the innocent look to the heavens for salvation, only look on in horror as the devil poured the contents of hell over them. And so it was and so it remained until Satan, who had found refuge in the hearts of too many, was cast out and the women had cried.."enough!!" ---------- And on countless memorials in towns and villages across the cold and colourless country, new names were added to the old and memorials once again were baptised with tears of the innocent for the innocent. And in the great city as the weak winter sunshine filters through the mists of an early November morning, the Autumn Men in their black coats and polished shoes still stand, shameless, in solemn line to bow their heads and lay poppy-lit wreaths, mankind's apology to its youth. ---------- This then was the wasteland of his boyhood. One from which he would spend the rest of his life trying to escape.
