for Alan Horne
They seldom mentioned it and never
to the boys at the town’s Grammar School,
thinking they might mock it as vain-glory –
or just mock it, with their disregard
for school uniform, their penchant for
RAF great coats and graffited knapsacks,
their puzzlement on Remembrance Day,
and the Vietnam War flickering nightly.
It was usually only as an apt
aside, at break or dinner time, to those
of us young enough to be their sons,
about a colleague: Edward at Tobruk,
André a Japanese POW,
Ken at Dunkirk, Bernard the navigator
in a Mosquito, John on Sword Beach…
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By David Selzer