At our Remembrance Sunday service a guy called Gus Hales who was here in 82 stood up and recited this, he wasn't invited to and he wasn't supposed to be on the programme, he just did it, and I thought it was well worth repeating - it is possibly the most moving thing I have heard in a remembrance ceremony.
Every year on Remembrance Sunday
I sit in the corner of the British Legion Bar,
Dressed in blazer, shirt, Regimental tie
And polished shoes, with my head held high.
But deep in my mind, where nobody goes,
I see a wooden cross where the wind of victory blows.
“Three Cheers for Victory,” I hear the politicians say.
But you never asked me about my victory.
And, if they did, I would have explained it this way:
It isn’t your flags or emblems of war,
Or your marching of troops past the Palace’s door.
It isn’t Mrs. Thatcher on the balcony high,
Reaffirming her pledge to serve or die.
But it’s the look and the pain on a teenager’s face
As he dies for his country, In a far off place.
It’s the guns and the shells and the Phosphorus grenades
And the dead and the wounded in freshly cut graves
Or the grieving wife or the fatherless child
Whose young, tender life will be forever defiled.
Or the alcoholic soldier with a shattered mind
Who takes the suicide option for some peace to find.
Well, that’s my victory but no one knows
For its deep in my mind where nobody goes.