It is written from a woman's point of view and covers four of her generations.

Lest We Forget.

He fought for his country

On distant battlefields.

She prayed for his return

In the solitude of her bed.

His ravaged body she slowly healed,

But his shattered mind remained

In the mud and blood of Flander's fields.

Every night she sobbed herself to sleep

While the rum numbed his fears and demons.

Their son married my mother

In the spring of '38,

Just before war erupted in the Pacific.

And he left to do his bit.

She was fearful of  his fate,

Did not know the broken body at the dock,

Unaware that Burma had derailed his mind and spirit,

And that they would endure lives of quiet desperation.

I met him in the ‘60s,young and vibrant,

Full of life and fun.

His birth date betrayed him, conscripted in his prime.

Letters kept our love alive from distant Vietnam.

Married in a chapel, together again at last,

My life was bright and sunny,

But his mind was addled by war

With festering fears and unslain dragons

That stayed with us for years.

My tears of pain and desperation

Were all in vain.

As I awoke one morning,

To find him, hanging in the rain.

I thought we'd learned the lesson of the ‘60s,

To see through deceit and lies,

To question our leader's motivations

And let the light shine in.

But my son has gone to fight a war

For an empty, hollow cause,

On an arid, desolute battlefield

In a land too far away.

His young wife looks forward to the day

That he returns to her warm breast.

But my thoughts turn dark in the dead of night

And I lay awake in dread

That he will return in body,

But that his spirit will be dead.