Tony Grannell
The Landings. Normandy
The tides of war heaved up their dead
and flung them out to dry.
Cut down before could reach the shore
without a chanced reply.
Succumbed to that beyond belief,
a hell they could not breach.
A netherworld of peppered flesh
lay wailing on the beach.
From ship to shore in to the fray,
delivered from the sea.
In hope, a wish, by luck or might
to live past Normandy.
Of screeching metal tearing flesh,
of bodies left in ruins.
The madding din of burning skin,
minced meat and gaping wounds.
All walks of life together met,
together felled like trees.
The bullet, bomb, where once a son
were now but memories.
They give their all and held their own,
what courage came to naught.
But bits and pieces where they fell;
a stain where one once fought.
The landings packed into the brine
and floundered to the shore.
Ran bent in fear through rains of lead,
to face the nazi whore.
The chosen few to win the day,
with hue and cry howled on.
For dogs they\'ll be when fighting dogs,
how battles always won.
The waves now gently to and fro,
no cries but that of gulls.
No bombs, or pain, or Satan’s rain;
no shells to pierce the skulls.
The ocean knows the ills of man,
the horrors of their games.
Her sons of yore who are no more,
remembers all their names.