Operation Overlord - 156,000
British forces at Normandy - 61,000
Troops on Gold Beach -24,000
Troops in the 50th (Northumbrian) Infantry Division - 18,000
Troops in 8th Battalion - 800
two-inch mortar team - 2
Troop at war within a war - 1

Among tens of thousands ultimately it was one on one,
fighting with self, the unholy fear that sat undigested
with the bile and ration biscuit.

My Grandad survived this
He came back, yes, but he was not the same man
He scrambled ashore under the crack of mortar fire
and the scream of steel against sand.
The war took away chunks of him—pieces he could never get back. Something had changed in the way he stood,
the way he looked at the world,
as though he carried an invisible weight
that no one else could see.

At first, his laughter would still bubble up,
his humour slicing through the tension of everyday life,
as sharp and wry as it had always been.
Yet behind the jokes, there was a shadow,
a far-off echo of horror, the smell of salt and explosive,
the faces of comrades lost in moments too fleeting for words.
He buried it all, carefully,
under layers of quiet strength and fatherly love.
His family would never need to bear it;
it was his burden alone.

He returned to the vagaries of civilian life,
to conversations about the weather and pansies,
to cups of tea and headaches,
to the small joys and irritations that make up a life.
But there were nights when the past surged up like a tide,
relentless and suffocating. In those moments, he would sit alone in the dark, *** end in his hand gripping his knee,
and wrestled with the ghosts of Normandy.
He never spoke of it to his children.
Not the fear. Not the chaos.
Not the image of himself kneeling over a mortar
with trembling hands,
fighting not just the enemy but the primal terror of death.

Instead, he built a life for those he loved,
pouring himself into the role of father and grandfather,
filling the silence with stories
of building inspections and seaside holidays.
His silence about the war was not an omission but a shield—
an act of love to protect his family
from horrors they should never have to know.
And in that silence, there was heroism too,
a quiet bravery in choosing to carry the unthinkable alone.

Will it start soon? Or

has it already started?


Is it war right now?

On a foggy dawn, as the socks were drawn,
The toes prepared for battle.
The pinky declared, with lint in his hair,
“We’ll rattle those phalanges’ cattle!”

Big Toe led the charge with mighty arch,
And Second Toe braced his shield.
They clashed in glee on the knobby sea
Of the wrinkly battlefield.

The bunions bellowed, the corns would cry,
While calluses thickened their skins,
And nails like blades in jagged shades
Clattered with fearsome grins.

Then Little Piggy, with shrill wee-wee,
Let loose a mighty squeal:
“I’ve had enough, your stench is rough-
Our truce, let’s make it real!”

So Big Toe sighed and put down his pride,
And Second Toe did too.
The toes all hugged (though they all still bugged),
As feet so often do.

And thus it went, till the socks were spent,
And shoes enclosed their truce.
No more they’d fight in the stinky night-
They’d save it for when they’re loose.

The soldier can not always be fighting
There must have been a time before the fray
When the man’o war was a child running barefoot over land without mines
There must have been time for rest
Time for lunch
Time for bed
The fighting man must still dream at night, of *** and flying and the boogeyman as I do
He must have taken up his own arms
Dressed in his own clothes for the day
Let his own legs carry him eastwards
******* his own head on straight
The man inside the camouflage still combs his hair in the morning
Telephones his mother to ask about the recipe
Tries to lose the last of his gut before summer brings the beach back into popular culture
The soldier too shall die
Die victim and perpetrator and ghost of state sanctioned fury-for-a-cause
Fury-for-a-sons-life, mother dearest
Load him up! Send him off! We shall turn your boy into a man! We shall give him honour! We shall carry his body home from the field on the back of a friend!
The fighting man in his bloodlust
Turns out to be nothing more than any other son
Loaded into a gun
Shot across the field
Into the face of a history who will call him Soldier
Into the face of the mother who will call him Little One at the funeral
Who will wail and weep and tear the flag
The mother of war knows best the sting of the gun
The sting of the soldier in her arms

I live inside walls of breeze blocks,
Concrete and cinder halls.
My enemies live on the other side.
We meet sometimes—
to negotiate cease-fires
between cigarette breaks.

Still, while he offers peace,
he sets up artillery.
I ready my firearm.
She rings the bomb alarm.
The Luftwaffe ricochets—
while he prays...

He is more religion than a man.
She, more hurricane than a woman.
And I—something like a child.
Only the old and the unkind
keep count: forty-three, forty-four—
we are still at war.

After the cigarette burned out
The house burned down.
They say, "Child, take this to the grave."
If you made it out alive from the battle of Crete
Parents, I survived the friendly fire.
While you bombarded, I built the Roman Empire.

Beneath Orion's belt of stars,
The Sphinx's forepaws guard the Sphinx
And all its secrets.  Blood-red Mars,
Beneath Orion's belt of stars,
Planning the war to end all wars,
Observes the mummy's forty winks.
Beneath Orion's belt of stars,
The Sphinx's forepaws guard the Sphinx.

(A lone voice whispers)

If only they, today, embrace this whole poem

Just like the Seal once broken long ago in Golgotha

We all have a way home if we realize as a society

That old control is over, and we all have the chance to follow the old words

Once given to Noah

And from each human being, too, I will demand an accounting for the life of another human being.

Whoever sheds human blood,

    by humans shall their blood be shed;
for in the image of God
has God made mankind.

(C) Copyright John Duffy

I thought loving you would be like coming home....
or how it felt as a child to be carried into the house by your father when you were almost asleep in the car.
but I wasn't even close....
loving someone is like nothing else, I couldn't tell you anything in this world it is like.
but if I had to try to convey a fraction of what it feel's like, I'd say this.
Love is a war nobody will ever win, they will think they have but in the end nobody wins.
someone will always be burnt, fractured, bruised.
love always leaves scars.... on you or them or someone far in the back, someone who watched from the side lines wishing to be seen.
Love is a battlefield where nobody knows who's side their fighting for.
I used to think love was like coming home, but it's like going to war, blindfolded.