The Real Cost of War
Lindsey Graham, U.S. Senator, May 29th, 2023: “the best money we’ve ever spent is killing.”
My father’s Combat Report, after responding to a raid on Teignmouth, England, in which six were killed, many injured, and 183 homes and a school were destroyed.
„Absturz in See,“ the note said, “ditched in the sea“.
Someone wanted the truth to be told,
For the record to be correct.
Posterity matters, he said.
Someone, in handschrift,
Crossed out the German Military Archive,
Writing, firmly, it came down
“West of Cherbourg“.
Sure, it mattered to his family, his squadron.
It mattered to those who buried the
Stinking, burned bodies,
Recovered from the sea.
Most of all, it still matters,
For those who can think
Of the cost of that grave
At quiet La Cambe.
Today, who knows the damage of a de Wilde shell?
Who can grasp the panic of death?
Who knows the lifelong pain of the wife and her baby,
Widowed that day?
Forgotten horror is a sin.
Yet the sly merchant with malignant pleasure goads
Their loud, slobbering agents‘ claims and goals,
Glorying in their empty boasts,
„It’s fun to maim! Let’s kill some more!“
They are a type; you know them well.
They hound you, lying to start wars,
Relishing accolades,
Seeking money, fame, anything – just to kill.
And how different they are,
To that nameless scribe,
Crossing out incorrect words
Of some regimental hack, far from the battle scene.
Money was not an issue,
Fame was not a concern,
Truth mattered –
The record should be straight.
To remember
The cold bodies who fought
And found, too soon, the real
Cost of war.
An extract of the German Military Archive record RL2 III1184 showing the corrected death of the pilot my father killed
Contributed by Nigel Scotchmer
