| I am working tomorrow, so i am posting my Remembrance Day post today.....
LEST WE FORGET
11th Month.........11th Day.............11th Hour
As i was growing up, we would often ask my grandfather what it was like to have been in the war. He would very rarely answer, although once in a while he would tell us about time spent in Italy or France...mostly about the trouble he would get into at the Private's mess.
But there was one story that he told us that stuck in my mind.
I will never forget the feeling i had in the pit of my stomach as he told us about the day that he lost his friend.
The two of them had been sitting down, enjoying a break in the cross fire that made up most of their days. They had been reading. It became very quiet, and Grandpa heard a strange noise.
He turned to ask his friend what it was, but his friend was no longer there.
The body was, but the bullet that had embedded itself into the man's skull had made sure that there would be no more reading or talks for the two friends ever again.
This happened while they were sitting together....beside one another.
It could have been him.
Now i like to believe that my grandfather was spared because he still had things to do....become a father to my mother for example..and ultimately become my grandpa.....But the truth of the matter is that war knows no boundaries.
It does not care who you are, and the fact that it was not my grandfather who died that day was just luck.
It is the same luck that kept my Father-in-law alive while other members of his family perished in Coventry.
The same luck that saw his twin brother shot down instead of him.
The same luck that helped keep him alive while he was in a POW camp in Burma.
These are the men that i come from.
One by blood and one by..well..luck
I think i am a pretty lucky woman.
Thank-you Grandpa
Thank-you Papa
Remembrance Day
Sitting amidst the noise
the silence frightens
Shouts followed by silence
A book flutters to the ground
words fall from the page
covered in blood
as
the noise begins again.
He was someone's brother
someone's son
someone's friend
And on that day
he was thrown away
tossed like the book that fell from his hands
as the bullet met his skull
But he never moved
When Henry found him he was still sitting
hands outstretched like he was still holding that book
the book that had fallen to the ground
covered in blood
as the noises began again.
kimby 2005
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