HELMAND
written in 2009

I

Hell on earth
in Helmand Province
Do the folks back home
comprehend this?

Has it dawned on them
that we are at war
and we’re not
involved in
another British Imperial
‘little local skirmish’?
Do they realise the import
“Killed in Action”
and media terminology
held back in times past
for wars formally declared?
There can be no negotiation.
It’s them or us
kill or be killed.
If we give in now
we’ll reap the whirlwind.

Why don’t they see
this at home?
Don’t they realise
we are safeguarding
their liberty?

II

Feel so lonely
watching BBC iPlayer
“Youth Question Time”
- have they lost the plot or what?!

My friends
are dying here!
It is a worthy cause
but with an ambivalent nation
the mood out here is ugly
and I’m embarrassed at my peers
with their self-righteous airs
having as much substance
as the endless play stations
to which they are addicted,
convinced they are in “real life”,
true combatants, even.

I guess I’m now
beginning to understand
Great Granddad’s
Churchillian Years;
an old PM
leading a generation
behind him in his strength, charm, oratory,
charisma
and sheer determination
to defeat that other Taleban
- the NAZIs

III

For there is no difference.
The dogma is the same
the people slumbering
and reluctant warriors.

But as I look at
the empty bed space
just an hour ago alive,
Joe will not be back
this afternoon;
we’ll not have our
Budweiser and ciggie tonight;
I stand transfixed by memories of
James, Steve and Niall,
three empty beds
further down the line
awaiting new arrivals
and I pray to G-D
that being blown
to Kingdom come
at just gone 8 this morning,
that the folks back home
will think this through;
that they’ll give us the kit
we need;
but above all
mirror the resolve
of the lads and lasses
out here,
and not capitulate.

IV

We are bastions of liberty
their liberty.
Maybe they should take a look
at our field hospital
Camp Bastion
at the end of a
17 hour
non-stop stretch;
stretcher-bearers
blood
guts
gore
and death
or
life hanging by a thread;
some lost
many saved
limbs dismembered
or worse still
amputated
sight lost
hearing gone
uncontrollable shaking
the epileptic seizure
that eerie call of the dying ... ...
for Mum!

V

The wonderful
moments too
Our Florence Nightingales
holding a trembling hand,
oh yes,
they’re still all here...
whispering encouragement
to a sightless mind
or to glazed expressions
or just soothing
morphined weariness.

The most beautiful smiles
Alighting the Soul
that will serve to nourish
next year and
even sixty, seventy and ninety
years on.

The smiles, the banter, and laughter
Life goes on ...
wounded eyes
of silent warriors stupefied
but resting now, following all the ward activity ...
offering a silent prayer,
the only part of them
left free to move,
others staring blankly
at the ceiling or
transfixed by the
rotor blades of the Chinook
not seeing
the air conditioning system,
and a lone lance corporal
half here half gone
mutilated
and wondering whether
he has the guts
to ask that nurse out
when all this is over.

A whisper of encouragement
to rest,
as an unseen hand
from behind the veil
soothes a troubled mind
and gently holds the soul departed;
she turns
and peers at the bed
holding back tears
with an iron determination;
and in decades to come
children talk
of the day grandma
on ward in the war
felt a movement
feather-like
across her cheeks.

VI

Airlifted to safety
and in less than a day
back home
on Ward in
The Queen Elizabeth
Birmingham NHS
with mates again
but above all family,
dedication surrounding,
nurses and doctors
physios and orderlies
all doing their bit
to rebuild our
shattered frames;
remaining stoic
and beaming that
quiet smile
of reassurance
when another life
slips quietly beneath
the sheets,
another bed
jettisons a soul,
and a father walks
to the end of the line
in utter disbelief
that his boy has gone
his best mate
his soul!

And further down the line
in a private bay
siblings stand horrified
stupefied
as their mother emerges
from behind the curtain,
a set jaw
yes, and tears,
but with life in her eyes,
a grim determination
as they
see in her
the reflection of
their younger sister
now departed.

The heat
Oh the heat!
The flies
the mosquitoes
the endless buzz of
tarantula-like creatures
flying into earholes
up nostrils
in eyelids
or nibbling on thighs
shins, arms and faces
but bandaged arms
preventing retaliation
an even greater
self-discipline required.

VII

And is it worth it?

You, who sit in your
IKEA sofas
knocking back red bulls
and vodka coke ices
your gay cocktails
... ... you who pontificate
about us all being chocolate soldiers
on Horse Guards Parade;
have you been on parade
as Big Ben strikes
the Eleventh Hour?
A thousand soldiers
as one,
Present Arms,
a staccato note,
that cracks
like a lightning strike
across the Square!

A revered Monarch
not just a queen, lad
The Queen,
Our Queen,
Our Head of State
yes, and yours too
if you stopped to think
a mo.

Our own Queen Esther,
'Esther?' you ask?
Yes. Just do yourself a favour.
Forget your tweets and facebook
And call up the Book of Esther.
It won't take you long to read,
but you'll learn a lot
about a holocaust prevented;
of a wicked man Haman;
and catch a glimpse of that
which even now
has only just gone over the hill
into history!

Yes. Just do yourself a favour.

Can’t cope?
Then UTube a Princess’s Pledge

A life of service
An inspiration to us as we go about

this four-kingdom Nation’s work

and a Commonwealth too.

Five hundred horse bristle
champing at the bit
the roll of the drums,
the Life Guards

Blues and Royals
break into rising trot
As Artillery prepares to canter
the clanking of chains,
and into canter
reining back
rippling beasts
anticipating

that full gallop across
Hyde Park.

VIII

Slewing the guns round
bringing into line
Chargers mounted
Dismounted
Gun Crews with precision
defying the naked eye,
intensity and perfection

The Order
The deafening roar
and Londoners quietly
counting
twenty one times
at the freedom they take for granted
but which we fight for,
die for;
our guarantee to hold the line
come what may,
no matter how devilish these
21st Century Dervishes be.

For we live and die
in defence of your freedom
and not just yours
but of The Afghan People;
but being misinformed,
you insist we’ve subjugated
on your Thursday Evening
Question Time
- that these people
are railing and buckling
under an ‘army of occupation’

Really?

IX

Have you seen a civilised people
with its heart torn out?

Have you seen a population
denuded of its right
to education?

Have you seen Womanhood
brutally enslaved
under the masquerade of
spiritual enlightenment?

You have
but you choose to ignore
And we have
but we will not ignore

We will not buckle
or expose the neck
or bend the knee
to this 21st Century
NAZI Thuggery!

We see and perceive
and have an understanding
of life
far, far beyond
your wildest expectations

We see life in the raw
We see death stalk our ranks
and snatch as mercilessly
as a shark devouring

a young albatross

on its attempted maiden flight
across the sun bleached
waves of the Pacific Ocean

X

Do not underestimate us
Do not mistreat
or ridicule our resolve

We are in the vanguard
fighting your battle
whether you like it or not.

If we lose this
you, and all of us,
will go down.

XI

And to echo
that great man’s warning
to an earlier generation
“... ... we will sink into the abyss
of a new
dark age
made more sinister
and perhaps more
protracted
by the lights of perverted
science."

A Cavalryman too he was
by the way
at Omdurman on an earlier
hot
unpleasant sticky September
day in 1898
But then this great man’s
rallying call
“... ... let us therefore
brace ourselves to our duties,
and so bear ourselves... ...”

And this is precisely
what we must do today.
Take no notice of
befuddled
muddle-headed
crooked politicians
and puffed up besuited
spin doctors.
They have their day.
But deal with them
as befits our People
dispatching them
through the ballot box.

XII

We, in hell on earth
in Helmand Province,
will hold firm.
We won’t give in.

XIII

Yes!
I dread the sacrifices
I will see
and wonder whether
that scythe will
cut my shadow too.
A Decoration,
A Military Cross
is no guarantee
no ticket to safety;
if anything their
plight is heightened
as young men and women
look to decorated men and women
for inspiration, leadership
encouragement;
for they will always
lead from the front.

It doesn’t do to dwell.

Instead we get on
with what we’re paid to do.

Just give us
your unconditional support.

Don’t cut us off
Stay in touch.

We are your sons,
brothers, fathers,
mothers, daughters,
sisters
grandchildren
nephews and nieces
uncles and aunts
and partners
and if not those
then just one
of your many friends.
We’re defending our way of life
 “... ... our island,
whatever the cost may be.”

Just get what Afghanistan is
in perspective.

Then, and only then
will we win the day.

Please, please
don’t go down
the Halifax path
the Chamberlain Gentlemen’s Agreement
this stupid notion
that they’ll keep their bargain

They won’t!
They never have,
They don’t now
They never will in the future

I hear you compare
them with the IRA
Come off it
There is no comparison
a different situation
We trust our politicians
and we must!
But question their judgment
through the ballot box

Listen to the guys and girls
Here on the ground
Listen to the Afghans!

XIV

We’ve got to stick
this out and win.
Some of us will die
Make sure it’s us
not you.

We’ve seen 9/11
and 7/7 too.

That should be
warning enough.
Don’t let a People
capitulate to
medieval thuggery
and unthinkable brutality.

2009-2011

Notes

The words I have quoted in italics in Part XI were spoken to Parliament and the Nation on air by Winston Spencer Churchill – in one of his most famous Battle of Britain Speeches - in which he laid his cards on the table and left every man, woman and child fully aware of what was about to alight us – the angel of death.

It is curious how so often these days this most important section is edited out by producers more inclined to political correctness than reporting of historical truth. I include children because my own parents 12 and 13 in 1940 have often told me just what these incredible speeches did for them – how Granddad Marshall would say to Mum in her distress, ‘now don't you go worrying about the Germans dear! You just listen to Mr Churchill. You’ll see, we’ll be alright. They wont be jumping out of the sky on us dear!

Mum’s understandable fear was the newsreel images of the Nazis jumping out over Holland on the day the Blitzkrieg started, 10th May 1940.

The reference to Halifax and Chamberlain in Part XIII refers to Lord Halifax, Foreign Secretary in Neville Chamberlain’s Government and the leading proponent of appeasement with Hitler. Upon assuming the Premiership on 10 May 1940, Churchill packed him off to Washington as Britain’s Ambassador to the USA.

And the Gentlemen’s Agreement refers to ‘Peace with Honour’ in 1938, the piece of paper bearing the signatures of Mr Chamberlain and Hitler who had well and truly double crossed this noble man, something from which the ex Premier never recovered upon losing office on 10 May and very sadly died on 9 November 1940 at the height of the London Blitz.