Today I will celebrate a Requiem Mass for the fallen and victims of war. I always find myself troubled at this time of the year with many questions and few answers. This is a song I always listen to at this time
The Old Man's Tale -Ian Campbell (tune traditional, 'Nicky Tams')
At the turning of the century I was a boy of five
Me father went to fight the Boers and never came back alive.
Me mother was left to bring us up, no charity she'd seek,
So she washed and scrubbed and scrapped along on seven and six a week.
When I was twelve I left the school and went to find a job
I took the royal shilling and went off to do my bit,
I lived on mud and tears and blood, three years or thereabouts
Then I copped some gas in Flanders and got invalided out.
Well when the war was over and we'd settled with the Hun,
We got back into civvies and we thought the fighting done,
We'd won the right to live in peace but we didn't have such luck,
For we found we had to fight for the right to go to work
In '26 the General Strike found me out in the streets,
Although I;d a wife and kids by then and their needs I had to meet,
For a brave new world was coming and I taught them wrong from right,
But Hitler was the boy who came and taught them how to fight.
My daughter was a landgirl, she got married to a Yank
And they gave my son a gong for stopping one of Rommel's tanks.
He was wounded just before the end and he convalesced in Rome
He married an Italian nurse and never bothered to come home.
My daughter writes me once a month, a cheerful little note
About their colur telly and the other things they've got.
She's got a son, a likely lad; he's nearly twenty-one
And she tells me now they've called him up to fight in Vietnam.
We're living on the pension now, it doesn't go too far
Not much to show for a life that seems like one long bloody war.
When you think of all the wasted lives it makes you want to cry
I'm not sure how to change things, but by Christ we'll have to try.
Let us pray for peace.
