Tathra resident Jim Kelly wrote this poem for Anzac Day, about the tragedies that often happen when troops return home.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
It is written from a woman's point of view and covers four of her generations.
Lest We Forget.
For King and Country
He fought for his country
On distant battlefields.
She prayed for his return
In the solitude of her bed.
His ravaged body she slowly healed,
But his shattered mind remained
In the mud and blood of Flander's fields.
Every night she sobbed herself to sleep
While the rum numbed his fears and demons.
Their son married my mother
In the spring of '38,
Just before war erupted in the Pacific.
And he left to do his bit.
She was fearful of his fate,
Did not know the broken body at the dock,
Unaware that Burma had derailed his mind and spirit,
And that they would endure lives of quiet desperation.
I met him in the ‘60s,young and vibrant,
Full of life and fun.
His birth date betrayed him, conscripted in his prime.
Letters kept our love alive from distant Vietnam.
Married in a chapel, together again at last,
My life was bright and sunny,
But his mind was addled by war
With festering fears and unslain dragons
That stayed with us for years.
My tears of pain and desperation
Were all in vain.
As I awoke one morning,
To find him, hanging in the rain.
I thought we'd learned the lesson of the ‘60s,
To see through deceit and lies,
To question our leader's motivations
And let the light shine in.
But my son has gone to fight a war
For an empty, hollow cause,
On an arid, desolute battlefield
In a land too far away.
His young wife looks forward to the day
That he returns to her warm breast.
But my thoughts turn dark in the dead of night
And I lay awake in dread
That he will return in body,
But that his spirit will be dead.