Bilston Poem

[LadyLucksters]

Brian Bilston Three Postcards.

I know I might sound stupid, but I don’t understand it. I get bits but not all. Please can someone help me understand it? So many people have been really moved by it and I’d like to understand it more.

It seems to be about a young woman whose sweetheart has gone off to the war. He’s sent postcards from different locations. In the final stanza, his postcard has arrived a day after the telegram telling her that he has died in combat.

It's the woman's husband sending postcards home, the first a jolly one of the seaside, the second one from the army barracks, and the last one as he goes overseas to fight. It arrives two days after the telegram to tell his pregnant wife he has been killed.

The man she loved/married had gone off to war, he sent a postcard from station, postcard from barracks, then finally a postcard when arrived in France. But she received 'the telegram' saying he'd died. So she's pregnant and just found out her husband died at war.

Thank you all. I will read it again now. Very sad.

Yep what they all said.

The first, his handwriting is still unfamiliar, but she KNOWS he's the one; the second, from his basic training, Tidworth barracks feature, so he's at Salisbury Plain, they are now married - a vase, a wedding present, used as a prop for this card. The third, sent from Boulogne, shows he is now en route to Flanders or similar. It came two days after the telegram -blackedged, stiff - that notified her that sadly, he was killed in action.

And yes, she is pregnant, you can imagine her hand on her bump. WAIL.

NB never feel thick about poetry, do ask. Some of us love to unpick, to contemplate and analyse poetry.

Thank you! ☺️

Here it is

I hadn't seen that one today. That is sad.

I think the key in understanding is knowing that "the telegram" means the official telegram a family would receive as notice of a death. You see it in period dramas, everyone happy at home until a boy on a bike rings the doorbell carrying a black edged telegram. Everyone knew what that was.
So reading that line with "the telegram" makes your heart sink because you know instantly there will never a family trip to France in peace time.