Sacrifice

Although this is a fictitious work, it is none-the-less born of endless questions and listening in to 'grown-up' conversations when I was a child ... so here it is, the truth of sacrifice.


WW1

"As a soldier did I want to go to war?  No, of course I bloody didn't!  Who wants to go and have some bugger take pot shots at you. Heh!  It bloody hurts getting shot, believe me it do.  And if you gets shot bad, well, then the dying is bad, I've seen it, seen things no man should see.  Worst is gas, and the burning.

Did I want to risk  making a widow out of my old Dutch? (colloquial for a wife) Nah, widows don't fare well, not when they'd half a dozen kids hanging round her skirts, besides which she weren't that pretty either ... but she was my old Dutch and I loved her.

My kids?  Little buggers that they were, always in trouble, always up to mischief.  But they needs a Dad, who doesn't need a Dad?  Dad's teach you right from wrong, Dad's teach how to get the fun out of life...well mine did.  Lots of kids around here grew up without their Dad, some hadn't even had a chance to make memories with their Dad.  Sad that, proper sad.  And the Mother's.  Would wave all, yes all, their sons off to war, that would be their last memory of them, them marching proudly, arms around each others shoulders, off to a war they couldn't understand, vowing to Ma they would watch out for each other...Ghosts even then.

I didn't know the why of the war.  What did I care who, in some foreign country, invaded some other foreign country?  Some foreign Duke got shot...so what?  It weren't even one of our own Dukes.  But them politicians, with their words, firing you up, making you feel it was your duty.  And yes, it did feel like we was duty bound, even though we weren't quite sure why.  Duty bound, until we got there.  Some muddy field with open air burrows, (trenches) and barbed wire as far as the eye could see ... and corpses, men and horses, all swollen and about to burst.  The mud, the stench, the mould ... yes the bloody mould ... not like what grows on the outside privy wall, but grows on your skin, on your bloody skin.  The only duty we felt then was not to foul our trousers.

Heroes they called us, made it all seem so romantic and brave, like in some film or play. Well we didn't feel like bloody heroes, and it weren't no film, it was real life.  They didn't treat our wives and kids like their man was a hero.  Rationing there was...HUH!  All that meant is that the likes of us went without so the likes of them (upper class) could carry on eating their foiled grass!  (fois gras).  You know I had to go get my Dutch and kids out of the work house?  It was the only place they would've survived in.  The only place my little 'uns could be seen by a doctor.  No NHS.  A shilling just for the quack (doctor) to put his nose round the door back then, most of them never even had a pot to piss in. (colloquial for extreme poverty)

To be sure, if we didn't end up maimed or dead we had it better in some ways than those left back home.

But it dawned on us, the enemy was having it just as rough as we was, as eager to win as we was, and if we didn't win then it would be they with their jack-boots tramping up our streets, jack-boots under our tables, jack-boots by our beds, them with our wives, with our daughters.  Suddenly we had a duty, suddenly we had a reason.  It never mattered we knew naught of the cause of it all, we just knew that the sacrifice to keep our loved ones safe was well worth it in the end.

Not many of us left now that came back from that hellish war, fewer each year.  I march every year, lay down my wreath, and remember....Remember my mates, my brothers, my uncles, but I only remember their sacrifice once a year, I have other memories, they had other memories, they were more than just bloody Great War heroes, they were sons, and husbands, and nephews, and uncles.  They had lives before the war, and it was those lives before the war that they lost, never to be fulfilled, that was their sacrifice."