I am sure Remembrance Day has special resonance for so many Leaside residents. At 11 a.m. on the 11th we dash out into the cul de sac on Cardiff Road, young and old alike, to look up and see the old WWII Spitfires fly over. If it is cloudy, we still can hear them “growling” above the clouds like angry ghosts.
Apparently, the life expectancy of an RAF pilot in the Battle of Britain was rarely over four weeks and they were outnumbered four to one by the Luftwaffe! But they came from all over the world to join the fight. One Czech pilot was shot down and burned so badly he had 28 operations over the next two years. After his last operation, the Brits made him an honorary member of the “Guinea Pig Club.” Alas, British humour! Such irrepressible insolence is perhaps why they won – who knows? – but the first thing this chap did after his last and 28th op was hop back in his Spit and head off to fight in the Malta theatre.
“A man can be destroyed but not defeated,” as Ernest Hemingway wrote.
For all of them, a few lines:
We are children of cruel peace
And long dread
Who cut the edges of our fathers’ swords
With syllables and threads,
Walking sad looks and shapeless
reaches of our prayers
To that edge
Where we would
not look
Small voices
of our statues
Rise
To carve the silence
In courage of our dead
On this small patch
of ground
Once grew the wings of light
And quiet, the
blossom of the root
Beyond the knife …
But now on this
small hill
Strangely stands the November grass
Tall and still,
And long now sleeps the windy grief
That one fine
morning took
Our dreams in
purple blood
To spill
Such glory
on our seed
Where once our
laughing stallions
…stood.
– Richard Grace