These bruised and battered men
weren’t heroes, there was no swagger
to their stride, no twinkle toes and
fancy steps, no flashy clothes. Their
rumpled denims were the very least
expected of their Company pride,
and when they marched in line abreast
there was no sparkle in their eyes.
They stood at ease when ordered
by commands they scarcely heard,
their ears still rang with chilling sounds
subsumed in larger schemes that drowned
their immaturity; the shriek and crash of
hours ill spent in terror of their lives,
the stink and death and ruthless grip
on weapons hot from recent use,
the props that held their shoulders
square, their eyes aligned and chins so
sundered in, rigid with the fright of firing
helplessly into the night to stay alive.
Then they returned to friendly shores
for even more endemic enmity,
shunned, condemned, who dared
malign these fragile men, called
them cowards and murderers of children,
denied them peace and sanctuary when
all their terrors should have ended.
And there they stand at barely twenty
years, no heroes to a man, just boys worn
old, austere from battle strain, at odds again
for love within their thankless mother land.
© I.D. Carswell 1968
weren’t heroes, there was no swagger
to their stride, no twinkle toes and
fancy steps, no flashy clothes. Their
rumpled denims were the very least
expected of their Company pride,
and when they marched in line abreast
there was no sparkle in their eyes.
They stood at ease when ordered
by commands they scarcely heard,
their ears still rang with chilling sounds
subsumed in larger schemes that drowned
their immaturity; the shriek and crash of
hours ill spent in terror of their lives,
the stink and death and ruthless grip
on weapons hot from recent use,
the props that held their shoulders
square, their eyes aligned and chins so
sundered in, rigid with the fright of firing
helplessly into the night to stay alive.
Then they returned to friendly shores
for even more endemic enmity,
shunned, condemned, who dared
malign these fragile men, called
them cowards and murderers of children,
denied them peace and sanctuary when
all their terrors should have ended.
And there they stand at barely twenty
years, no heroes to a man, just boys worn
old, austere from battle strain, at odds again
for love within their thankless mother land.
© I.D. Carswell 1968
For want of a way of expressing it, back then National Servicemen returning from operational tours of duty in SVn often found themselves still in a battlefield rite of bizarre conflict. Some never recovered from being jeered at and ridiculed when they marched before their peers, supposedly on triumphal return having survived the war. Surviving the aftermath of a peace which didn't exist probably caused more casualties
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