6th JUNE 1944

[Founded on fact - I was in the classroom… ]

The sun shone bright on our busy class:
We had lessons to learn and exams to pass.
Our Master stood, tired and worn and cross,
And we whispered, grinning: “Old Misery Moss!”
Outside the window the cricket square
Lay serene in the gentle air,
And a mower hummed its homely tune
On that day I remember, the Sixth of June.

The sky was a bowl of smoke-swirled death,
Whipped by the gasp of dying breath,
And planes howled over with slaughter-screech
As the guns crashed out on that Norman beach.
And men killed men and the blood ran down,
Turning the golden sand to brown.
And among the dead on that deadly noon
Lay the son of Old Moss, on the Sixth of June.

The sky was a bowl arched blue and clean,
The sea lay a tender, rippling green,
When, decades on, I stood myself
On that Norman beach with the gold sand shelf.
And I thought of our class and of cross Old Moss,
Whose son was killed, and who’d died of the loss,
Whose son was killed, too young, too soon,
Was killed for me, on the Sixth of June.
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