The Hunting Lodge is Marshal Blucher’s,
at 74 a hero of the hour at Waterloo.
Bonaparte flees to a channel port. Arrested,
gains the ultimate security of St Helena.
His conquerors (to give the allied armies
the credit they are due) return to riches,
or impoverishment. It’s a classy business, war.

Blucher is feted. Titles, land, even honours
from a grateful British crown, are heaped.
He retreats to Poland, then another fiefdom
in a disunited land, and this minor palace
where he can pursue an older enemy: the boar.
But not for long. Death quickly follows – a mausoleum
is built, provides a final place rest upon his laurels.

History may pause, only to resume its ironies.
Earlier Napoleon had marched into the jaws of hell,
and smelt Its Russian breath. His first retreat,
the overture to his end. Peace stutters for a century
or more, before the devil, poked, at last comes back
to intervene in yet another war. Red army
soldiers break into the Marshall’s tomb and steal
his European bones. Anticipating sport’s
clashes are the way of things to come,
they use his skull for football as an interlude
upon the march to skewer peace once more.

And here we are. Poland’s free, and sovereign;
prosperity spreads down motorways that split
the darkening forests either side. Great bridges
span the carriageways to give the boar safe passage
beyond the reach of commerce, if not the hunter’s gun.

Old Blucher’s house adjusts itself to life as an hotel.
Outside, two dozen jeeps and four-by-fours
stand waiting, engines clattering, smoke
exhausting in the fresh dawn air, as in 45
T34s vibrated on their bloody tracks.
We are not a regiment of tankers, young
and eager, trembling for a red star flag –
we are assorted farmers, vets, adventurers
and mostly middle-aged or old. The trucks we’re
taking to Ukraine, and one more war
with Russian Armies beating on a distant drum.