Like Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen, former soldier Geoff Bould has committed his thoughts about war to paper in a collection of poems entitled Shadows, based on his personal recollections of the World War Two. Having served as a tank crew member in the Seventh Hussars, the Seventh Armoured Brigade (Desert Rats) in the western desert, Burma and Italy, Geoff’s verse speaks from experience.

A retired civil servant, Geoff now 88, has lived in Watford since 1965. Married with two sons who both attended Watford Grammar School for Boys but have since moved away, Geoff says he writes to “keep from under my wife’s feet”.

A member of Ver Poets for the past ten years, Geoff has had poems published in a number of national poetry magazines and in Ver Poets anthologies. He also edited Conscience Be My Guide a collection of prison literature published by Zed Books in 2005.

“They were written by prisoners of conscience about their actual experiences,” says Geoff. “That might have been what started me off with poetry. For some reason I thought it might be easier than writing prose but that’s not quite true. I’d always been interested in writing. Before the war I’d wanted to be a reporter and I worked as a proofreader on the Yorkshire Post.”

Around the time Geoff settled in Watford, he also became a Quaker “and thus a pacifist”, he says, but there wasn’t any particular momentous event that drew him towards religious belief.

“I think I just grew up. There was no big change on the road to Damascus or anything like that. I grew up, read more, thought more, got married and had children. I’m not a hardline religious person.”

Geoff’s poems do not shy away from the devastating effects war can have on individuals. The afterward of his poetry book sums it up.

“What remains most powerfully should be our sympathy for the men, now dead, whose lives shone so fitfully, for the wounded in mind or body, and for those left at home, sick at heart. They are not heard except when poets speak. I, for my part, do not forget.”

Shadows is published by Acumen Publications, 6 The Mount, Higher Furzeham, South Devon, TQ5 8QY, price £3.50.