I am interrupting my series of Trevor Hewett poems to remember our War Dead.

Chris Simpkins, Director General of The Royal British Legion said yesterday:

“2008 marks the 90th anniversary of the end of the First World War, when nearly 1 million British men perished and many more returned home injured.

Remembrance Sunday, and indeed Armistice Day on the eleventh, give us a chance to quietly remember the many men and women who have fought for the freedom we enjoy, and continue to do so today.”

RemembrancePoppies


REMEMBRANCE DAYS

I can remember the love in my mother’s blue eyes
as she told us about her brothers Sydney and Stanley
and how they were lost in the Great War
and how I thought I would one day go and find
my soldier uncles and I am still searching for them.

I can remember how my dark-eyed father
stared at the floor as he tried to tell me about
his four years in the dead mud of the trenches,
four years in which all his friends were killed.

I can remember when the German bombers came booming over Bath
and my mother took us down to hide in the cellar in our pyjamas..

I can remember when our family friend Major Patterson, so
handsome and three times taller than me, a six-year-old,
staggered back in shreds to eat with us after being rescued from
the chilly madness of Dunkirk.

I can remember being trained by fascist corporals
and sergeants in the RAF to march like a robot
and think like a gun.

Yes, I’ve seen enough war at a distance to make me
hate war more than anything.

And thanks to my mother and my father and my wife and my
children and my grandchildren and my dogs and my cats - I have
seen enough peace to know that only peace can satisfy my heart.

Adrian Mitchell
August 11th, 2006