THIS salute to The Herald's own war veterans was written for the sixtieth anniversary of D Day.
Survivors of that admirable generation will be feted today on this seventieth anniversary.
THE VETS
The quiet ones have long since left the office floor.
They rarely raised their voices,
Nor used four-letter words in front of women,
Not needing to assert their masculinity by bandying obscenities.
Some at least of them were killers,
Fighting Jap or Jerry to the death with tommy-gun or rifle.
Some had dealt abstract destruction from the skies.
Others had observed their mates reduced to bloody shards.
And all had undergone war's terror, filth, and camaraderies.
They did not speak of such things to their younger colleagues,
As if they felt some shared instinctive prohibition.
Was it to spare our feelings, or from fear of being
Viewed with pity, incredulity, or horror?
Perhaps they had to block such memories
To keep from nightmare and to handle with some
Equanimity the banal challenges of civil life.
But was there not much comfort
In that great shared unambiguous purpose?
Surely these veteran warriors must have thought so;
The proud survivors doubly so today.
- LD
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