A remembrance poem. Background information follows the poem.
Lest We Forget
What do we forget when we remember
What are the stories left untold
What do we think each November
As we march down that glory road
As we march down that gory road
One hundred million
Don’t come home from war
Another eight hundred million
Who lived to bear its scar
Who lived to bear its scar
Lest we forget
What they were dying for
Lest we forget
What they were killing for
Lest we forget
What the hell it was for
What do we forget when we remember…
Owen Griffiths
Owen Griffiths is an Associate Professor of History at a university in Canada. His area of study is especially modern East Asia
(Japan and China mainly).
He writes: " I have
never been to war but both grandfathers (both British) fought in WWI
and my father fought with the RAF in Europe and Asia in WWII. My
mother worked in a mortar shell factory and a pig farm in England
during WWII. My parents immigrated to Canada after the war in 1949,
among the many who passed through Pier 21 in Halifax (Canada's Ellis
Island). My father was a navigator on the Argus for the RCAF so I
lived on air bases in Canada until I was 10.
Professionally, I currently have two
main research fields: One, examines how Japanese society from the
1890s to the 1930s became increasingly militarized by analyzing the
stories written for children in mainstream print media. The other
argues for a reorientation of our systems and tropes of remembrance
to include killing and dying on all sides in the hopes of
constructing more honest and accurate representations of war as
universal tragedy and as a common ground of human inhumanity."
Falklands war 1982
Casualties
Background to poem
This
poem was written shortly after the event it describes and is by Nigel
Bruen who was the commander of a team of eighteen Royal Navy bomb
disposal divers
who were the most highly decorated unit in the Falklands conflict.
He explains, "It was written after the horrific night of
8/6/82 when the casualties from Bluff Cove flooded into the hospital at Red
Beach from one direction and those from HMS Plymouth came from another. My
diving team were fully employed looking after the wounded and other survivors,
nursing and helping the surgeons in the operating theatre. A sailor from the
Plymouth grabbed the attention and admiration of the Team: although badly
wounded himself, he was greatly concerned for his 'oppo', wounded in the head,
next to him."
Casualties
The stretchered sailor, by his friend
Whose hand he
clasped and willed his pain to mend,
In whispers to a medic,
raised
Imploring eyes whose sparkle, morphine-glazed,
Said, "Help my oppo,
please, not me;
He's hurting bad, and worse - he cannot see."
Commander N A `Bernie´Bruen MBE DSC WKhM
THE WARRIOR'S CODE OF HONOR
From an American soldier who wishes to
remain anonymous.
Writer's Note:
As a combat veteran wounded in one of America's
wars, I offer to speak for those who cannot. Were the mouths of my
fallen front-line friends not stopped with dust, they would
testify that life revolves around honor. In war, it is understood
that you give your word of honor to do your duty -- that is --
stand and fight instead of running away and deserting your
friends. When you keep your word despite desperately desiring to
flee the screaming hell all around, you earn honor.
Earning honor under fire changes who you are.
The blast furnace of battle burns away impurities encrusting your
soul. The white-hot forge of combat hammers you into a hardened,
purified warrior willing to die rather than break your word to
friends -- your honor. Unbeknownst to civilians, some things are
worth dying for.
This work attempts to describe the world as
seen thru the eyes of a combat veteran. It is a world
virtually unknown to the public because few veterans talk about
it. This is unfortunate since people who are trying to
understand, and make contact with combat veterans, are kept in the
dark.
I offer these poor, inadequate words - bought
not taught - in the hope that they may shed some small light on
why combat veterans are like they are.
It is my life desire that this tortured work,
despite it's many defects, may yet still provide some tiny sliver
of understanding which may blossom into tolerance - nay,
acceptance - of a Warrior's perhaps unconventional way of being
due to combat-damaged emotions from doing his duty
under fire.
THE WARRIOR'S CODE OF HONOR
Combat is scary but exciting.
You never feel so alive as when being shot at without result.
You never feel so triumphant as when shooting back -- with result.
You never feel love so pure as that burned into your heart by
friends willing to die to keep their word to you. And they do.
The biggest sadness of your life is to see friends falling.
The biggest surprise of your life is to survive the war.
Although still alive on the outside, you are dead inside -- shot
thru the heart with nonsensical guilt for living while friends
died.
The biggest lie of your life torments you that you could have done
something more, different, to save them.
Their faces are the tombstones in your weeping eyes, their souls
shine the true camaraderie you search for the rest of your life
but never find.
You come home but a grim ghost of he who so lightheartedly went
off to war.
But home no longer exists.
That world shattered like a mirror the first time you were shot
at.
You live a different world now.
You always will.
Your world is about waking up night after night silently
screaming, back in battle.
Your world is about your best friend bleeding to death in your
arms, howling in pain for you to kill him.
Your world is about shooting so many enemies the gun turns red and
jams, letting the enemy grab you.
Your world is about struggling hand-to-hand for one more breath of
life.
You never speak of your world.
Those who have seen combat do not talk about it.
Those who talk about it have not seen combat.
The hurricane winds of war have hurled you as far away as Mars,
and you can never go back home again, not really.
After your terrifying - but thrilling dance with death, your old
world of babies, backyards and ballgames seems deadly dull.
People you knew before the war try to make contact with you.
It is useless.
Words fall like bricks between you.
Serving with warriors who died proving their word has made
pre-war friends seem too untested to be trusted - thus they are
now mere acquaintances.
Earning honor under fire has made you alone, a stranger in your
own home town.
The only time you are not alone is when with another combat
veteran. Only he understands that keeping your word, your
honor, whilst standing face to face with death gives meaning and
purpose to life. Only he understands that spending a mere 24
hours in the broad, sunlit uplands of battle-proven honor is more
satisfying to a man than spending a whole lifetime in safe,
comfortably numb civilian life.
Although you walk thru life alone, you are not lonely.
You have a constant companion from combat -- Death.
It stands close behind, a little to the left.
Death whispers in your ear: "Nothing matters outside my touch, and
I have not touched you...YET!"
Death never leaves you -- it is your best friend, your most
trusted advisor, your wisest teacher.
Death teaches you that every day above ground is a fine day.
Death teaches you to feel fortunate on good days, and bad
days...well, they do not exist.
Death teaches you that merely seeing one more sunrise is enough to
fill your cup of life to the brim -- pressed down and running
over!
Down thru the dusty centuries it has always been thus.
It always will be, for what is seared into a man's soul who stands
face to face with death never changes.
Dedicated to absent friends in unmarked graves.
A Purple Heart Medal recipient who made a
promise to remain an unknown soldier.
Member of the Military Order of the Purple
Heart (MOPH).
Life Member of the Disabled American
Veterans (DAV).
www.militarycodeofhonor.com
From Adham Smart
I'm Adham Smart from South East London. I wrote this poem about
a soldier in Afghanistan when I heard the news on the radio that
the MoD was testing out new drugs to make soldiers stay awake for
days on end. This gave me a serious case of the creeps, and I had
to write this:
My Little Soldier
High in the hills of Kandahar
a soldier sits in anguished wait.
He knows not what his troubles are-
no mind with which to contemplate.
His eyes are brightest bloodshot pink.
His nostrils flare like furnace bellows.
His greasy hair has a fetid stink.
The ground is foul with green and
yellow.
Alone he sits in fitful calm-
his eardrums have long since imploded.
No point in reading the soldier's palm-
his life-line has long since
eroded.
His hands are still like scenes of death.
They mask the raging spasms
within.
He draws one heavy, strangled
breath-
His lungs are weary and
paper-thin.
The soldier's face is streaked
with tears.
Day and night they wet his cheeks.
Insomniac year after year.
He has not closed his eyes in
weeks.
In one rare moment of clear
thought
he ends his life in a spurt of
red,
and as he sprawls across the floor
the crown of thorns slips off his
head.
Adham Smart
From Cody McEwan.
I am a U.S. army infantryman, who has spent time in Mosul, and
Baghdad.
Shepherd
I found out that not only was the light off,
But it was also broken.
No money for kerosene.
No money for nothin'.
Built my house out of grease cans in the middle of the dump
with the grazing sheep and burning garbage.
I only eat rice and corn chips. It's all I can afford.
I look around for useful things
that other people have thrown away.
I build and make use.
It used to stink here and everywhere
but now I hardly notice.
I long for the once peaceful country under iron fisted security.
Unity.
Nothin' but cigarettes and death these days.
Chaos.
Sometimes when it's real hot I can smell the bodies
cooking under the trash piles.
I wonder who they are.
Who did they love?
In the winter the floor turns to mud and it's frigid.
My kids are skinny.
My wife is dying.
She's very sick.
I need help, but there is no humanity within a thousand miles of
here.
Sometimes thieves come at night and steal my chickens.
Sometimes it seems like our god never loved any of us at all.
Maybe he eats pain like a Sunday snack.
Maybe he keeps all the good feelings for himself.
Or Maybe somewhere in heaven there is a clean little pond
with birds and fish and sheep that reflects a healthier happier
me;
with long black hair and a full beard and deep brown eyes
that smile in eternity.
Little, smiling children in the river,
Where we wash our clothes,
Where the sewage flows and their little ribs stick out,
Hugging tuberculosis lungs
all black
from breathing the fire from the tires.
Cody McEwan
Brian Cowan
(Canada)
The Last Veteran
I am the last.
There's no one left but me,
Of all of us who fought your wars who you no longer see,
I am the last.
The rest have gone before,
Sudden on some battlefield on someone else's shore,
In hospice or in prison camps or time's unending bore,
I am the last,
With no one left for tears,
To mourn my loss as I have mourned those losses through the years,
Of quiet heroes, friend and foe, with the courage to believe
Peace is born of sacrifice, affording none reprieve.
I am the last.
And you may think it well,
To gloat upon my passing as I shuffle into hell,
Taking comfort and assurance from the ending of my time,
That war, forever banished by the passing of my kind,
Will leave you to your cherished peace with none to pay the bill,
Foolishly believing it a simple act of will.
For arrogance beguiles all those who supplicate the plough.
O foolish men of foolish peace,
I am the last,
For now.
Brian Cowan
Soliloquy on Dieppe
We were just a bunch of young guys
Off to fight in freedom`s name.
We were just a bunch of young guys
Who saw adventure in the game.
Leaving friends and homes and lovers
When we thought we had it all,
We were just a bunch of young guys,
Who answered duty`s call.
We were just a bunch of young guys
On sea and land and air.
We were just a bunch of young guys,
Comrades forged in war.
Unquestioning and trusting,
We did our duty well.
We were just a bunch of young guys,
Who charged the gates of hell.
We were just a bunch of young guys
And questions still remain.
We were just a bunch of young guys,
Was our sacrifice in vain?
Someday when there are answers
Men will shake their heads and say,
We were just a bunch of young guys.
Brian Cowan
From Phuoc-Tan Diep
Phuoc-Tan is a Vietnamese refugee - a 'boat person'. His family
arrived in the UK in 1978. He particularly wants to say he is
thankful for every day of life. His desire is to wake people up to
some of the deeper questions:
life and death,
love and sacrifice,
war and freedom.
http://ptdiep.wordpress.com/
Here are 2 war poems I have written. The second is a prose
poem.
I have published them previously in a free e-book (and on Ink
Sweat & Tears) called Lights out & other poems @ http://stores.lulu.com/Diep
Lights out
'Lights out, lights off,'
we flee our beds,
downstairs, down there
helter-skelter, into the shelter
hidden from bombs
dropped by fathers in uniform
with similar smiles to Santa Claus.
Spotlights touch those planes above,
fingers too thin to catch the bullets
and bombs that fall like sand
and stones that clatter on children's heads,
bent over, pushed down by shaking hands
of mothers crying with hopes they wish could shield their
children's bodies
when the blast sends waves of sound
so loud it deafens the ground,
which quakes and groans and moans,
and breaks the house,
bursting it open, spilling its guts
all down the street.
There's the broken leg
from granddad's table.
There's the kettle
bursting and boiling too quick to whistle.
There's mom's laundry
never again in need of ironing
having found its final form
as singed confetti thrown
towards those planes
which fly so close, almost engaged,
but free to break for home,
which may not exist,
when they get back
if our fathers' presents are handed out
to foreign children, just like me.
My ears! My ears!
They bleed and ring with deafness
lodged too deep to think.
Its been so long the blood has dried
and died, so long the skin
has fallen off and blown away,
pieces of dust unmissed, unseen
blown over sea to find a field
where people plant and pray for life
to burst from seeds, then march back home
to bare houses where light
is scarce and mothers screech,
'Lights out, lights off,
no need for light when you're asleep.'
Late at night I hear mom ask,
'To kill, to die, are we better off?'
but she should know better,
the ground's too deep
for dad to hear her cry.
Phuoc-Tan Diep
Some foreign field
A can of Canada Dry ginger ale lies exposed, torn in half.
A tramp sniffs it for booze. It smells of fruit
fermenting in wet packs. His boots are rotten, toecaps
lifting off dirt-encrusted feet. He looks like he has
marched a long way, from a far off bunker in some foreign
field to this hidden place under a leafy bush in St. James
Park.
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