For Us They Suffer

For Us They Suffer.
For us they suffer hardship day and night,
So we may live in peace and understand,
The joys of liberty for which they fight,
That offer freedom to a warring land.
Nerve deployed in carrying out their duty
Transcends all dread of injury or pain,
Courage is a notion of great beauty,
For those who fear not loss nor count not gain.
( Written by a soldier’s mother )

 The Hell Where Youth Go.
I knew a simple soldier boy
Who grinned at life in empty joy
Slept soundly through the lonesome dark
And whistled early with the lark.
In winter trenches, cowed and glum,
With crumps and lice and lack of rum
He put a bullet through his brain
No one spoke of him again.
You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye
Who cheer when soldier lads march by
Sneak home and pray you’ll never know
The hell where youth and laughter go.
( Siegfried Sassoon )

Holocaust.
We played, we laughed, we were loved.
We were ripped from the arms of our parents and thrown into the fire.
We were nothing more than children.
We had a future.
We were going to be doctors, lawyers, rabbis, wives, teachers, mothers.
We had dreams, then we had no hope.
We were taken away in the dead of night like cattle in cars.
No air to breathe, smothering, crying, starving, dying.
Separated from the world to be no more.
From the ashes, hear our plea.
This atrocity to mankind can not happen again.
Remember us, for we were the children whose dreams and lives were stolen away.
( Barbara Sonek )

He Saved My Life.
He gave me strength when no one else could.
He rooted me on for each inhale and exhale.
He never doubted my course.
He inspired me and gave the world colour when all seemed grey.
He did it all when he was alive.
He did it all after he passed away.
He made me hold on.
He lent me the core of his soul and the strength of his being for as long as I needed.
He saved my life.
He saved it by letting me see I could save my own.
( Taryn Davis, 25.01.2013 .. Taryn became a widow at 21 years-old.
   Her husband Michael was killed by a bomb in Iraq )

He Was Just A Boy.
He was a boy of just fourteen,
Obsessed with the victor’s story,
Set out for him upon the screen,
Beating the foe, toasting the glory,
Forever it had been his dream,
To fight for his country and the Queen,
Once there it was soon he found,
The cold brutality all around,
With wasted bodies on the ground,
An eternity passed, and then it’s all over,
Thoughts slowly filtered through,
Of Mum and Dad, of home, and fields of clover,
What on earth was it all for?
Purgatory to serve some demon’s greed,
The glory was misunderstood of war,
Books and film both sow the seed,
Damning the young to give their lives,
At best to return with their memories.
( John Oswald )

In Flanders Fields.
In Flanders fields the poppies grow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie in Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow in Flanders fields.
( Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD, Canadian Army )

Flying The Spitfire.
Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings.
Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds, and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of – wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there,
I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.
Up, up the long, delirious burning blue
I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or ever eagle flew
And, while with silent, lifting mind I’ve trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.
( John Gillespie Magee, Jr. )

When you go home tell them of us, and say, for their tomorrow we gave our today.
( John Maxwell Edmonds, 1918 )