Our Grandparents' War

When I was young it was well-known to all

that our grandparents had been in the War,

that our grandfathers had gone off to fight,

leaving our grandmothers at home.

 

To us it was the stuff of 1960s movies,

Steve McQueen, the camp cooler king,

Charles Bronson was digging tunnels,

an action and adventure story.

 

It was all camouflage, dog-tags and the Battle of Britain,

Spitfires, Hurricanes and Lancaster Bombers,

hand-grenades and Sherman tanks,

a computer game played out in real-time.

 

But in real-life, war is not as portrayed

in some Hollywood blockbuster film,

not the game of Army we used to play

where twigs and branches become machine guns.

 

I cannot even begin to imagine

the terror of what it must have been like

to have been called up to go off and fight,

leaving all that you love far behind.

 

They traded shovels and briefcases for rifles,

the family-man becoming the soldier,

swapping steam trains and delivery vans,

for steering battlefield jeeps.

 

They landed on the Normandy beaches

to do what needed to be done

while our grandmothers struggled on back home

raising their daughters and sons.

 

It was at dawn eighty years ago today,

the Allied troops landed on Normandy shores,

on the day forever known as D-Day

the 6^th June 1944.

 

6/6/2024