Category Archives: History

Pegasus Bridge 50th Anniversary

04 Tuesday Jun 2019

Posted by in Celebrities, History, Music, Nostalgia, Personal, Poetry, Social Comment

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It was an entirely fortuitous and serendipitous encounter.  Major Howard was

sitting at a table outside Arlette Gondree’s cafe. (Arlette’s house was the first

French home to be liberated.)

I was in the company of Major Michael Hickey, a military historian who

was with my choir.  We were singing The Brahms Requiem seven times

in ten days, all over Normandy, along with a French choir and the

orchestra of Basse Normandie.  We sang in different towns

and we sang in German.  The audiences were in tears.  It was an

emotional and healing experience for all involved.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/99/Pegasus_Bridge%2C_June_1944_B5288.jpg

Photo: 9th June, 1944.  Wikimedia Commons

 

Pegasus Bridge

Generous gesture – German flag festoons,

hoisted with the Allied banners.  Bunching,

fussy boudoir blinds. Here swooping platoons,

like death’s head moths, stealthily came gliding.

Across the bridge John Howard bravely strode,

piper ahead, deflecting sniper shot.

Now European coaches block the road;

the dispassionate stamp postcards they’ve bought,

sending snapshots of Hell to those who knew

the mark of Caen first-hand. Wish you were here!

He was: a fact to startle and imbue

those that have eyes to see and ears to hear.

The café’s bright umbrellas shelter all

from noonday’s heat, so one could fail to spot

cool nonagenarian. By the wall,

hero’s crutches propped, ready for action.

His longest day is past; his time now short:

German beer his major satisfaction.

 

Adlestrop, Easter 2017.

31 Friday May 2019

Posted by in Community, History, Literature, Nature, Nostalgia, Poetry, Social Comment, Writing

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IMG_7743

Adlestrop Church

Photo by Candia Dixon-Stuart

 

The Post Office is closed; a flyer pokes

out of a letter-box; thin rivulet

trickles down a bridleway, aiming for

the Evenlode.  A profusion of blue

chicory shivers in the breeze.  The church,

sanctified by its topiary cross –

reminiscent of Jane Austen’s necklet

which she wore as she left the rectory

on merciful missions to village poor –

stood firm during Napoleonic Wars.

Its roof vault is as azure as that sky

the poet contemplated on his brief halt,

when his depression lifted on hearing

birdsong, which trilled above the hiss of steam.

 

From trenches, could he see that cloudless square?

When someone failed to set the station clock,

did Time itself revolt at what would come?

 

 

Could we also be on the brink of war?

Yet pale Wisteria seems to conquer

fear and heraldic tulips blazon hope.

 

A yellow poster in the bus shelter

promises that all money raised

from a talk on Edward Thomas will fund

Syrian refugees – will help those ‘wontedly,‘

or wantonly, driven out of their homes.

Who will attend?  Some wealthy weekenders?

 

Thomas never actually made it here,

although his spirit is ubiquitous.

Pervasive silence invites us to pause,

in the name of Poetry and Beauty,

before all clocks are permanently stopped

and there are no more birds in Gloucestershire.