It is clear that the mishandling of the situation led to the creation of a set of circumstances that ignited the Second World War and caused even more people to loose their lives.
We expect superhuman acts by our armed services, but we do not offer them the support they deserve when they return.
This post's poem arises from conversations I have had with a friend who fought in the Falklands War aged seventeen.
At the Battle of Goose Green he was an untested told sniper by his sergeant that it was either one of theirs or two of ours.
He is still paying our bill,
you
can see it in his eyes,
Goose
Green to Belfast
and
more places in between
than
you could point out on a map.
How
does a man who cares
steer
his heart through such times?
Focus
on the practical,
strip
and reassemble what you can
with
eyes closed in the dark
and
repeat for Queen and country.
Part
of him is always there
reflecting
on what they told him that cold island,
the
stark choice: the target or two of ours.
In
the blackness of this sleepless night
he
hears those words again:
two
of ours or him.
An equation with
only one solution.
There is a cost to war that is different for each individual and it has been so since the time of Odysseus. We can never know the consequences of our actions until afterwards.
One song that has, I feel, honestly attempted to describe the whole experience is I Was Only 19 and I would like to leave you with John Schumann talking about the circumstances that led him to write it.
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