Rudyard Kipling"
“When you're left wounded on Afganistan's plains and
the women come out to cut up what remains, Just roll to your rifle
and blow out your brains,
And go to your God like a soldier”
General Douglas MacArthur"
“We are not retreating. We are advancing in another direction.”
“It is fatal to enter any war without the will to win it.” “Old soldiers never die; they just fade away.
“The soldier, above all other people, prays for peace, for he must suffer and be the deepest wounds and scars of war.”
“May God have mercy upon my enemies, because I won't .” “The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his.
“Nobody ever defended, there is only attack and attack and attack some more.
“It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived.
The Soldier stood and faced God
Which must always come to pass
He hoped his shoes were shining
Just as bright as his brass
"Step forward you Soldier,
How shall I deal with you?
Have you always turned the other cheek?
To My Church have you been true?"
"No, Lord, I guess I ain't
Because those of us who carry guns
Can't always be a saint."
I've had to work on Sundays
And at times my talk was tough,
And sometimes I've been violent,
Because the world is awfully rough.
But, I never took a penny
That wasn't mine to keep.
Though I worked a lot of overtime
When the bills got just too steep,
The Soldier squared his shoulders and said
And I never passed a cry for help
Though at times I shook with fear,
And sometimes, God forgive me,
I've wept unmanly tears.
I know I don't deserve a place
Among the people here.
They never wanted me around
Except to calm their fears.
If you've a place for me here,
Lord, It needn't be so grand,
I never expected or had too much,
But if you don't, I'll understand."
There was silence all around the throne
Where the saints had often trod
As the Soldier waited quietly,
For the judgment of his God.
"Step forward now, you Soldier,
You've borne your burden well.
Walk peacefully on Heaven's streets,
You've done your time in Hell."
Memoirs from The Borneo Confrontation Years 1962-1966
Friday, March 09, 2007
Contributed by Keith Scott
"To the People (and the wildlife) of the Land Below the Wind", 'a thank you from an old soldier'
One of Us
(A Personal Journey)
"To see the world in a grain of sand,and heaven in a wild flower, to hold infinity in the palm of your hand,and eternity in an hour". -- William Blake from "The Auguries of Innocence".
"Homo sum, humani nil e me alienum puto".-- Anon
("I am a man, nothing human is foreign to me")
To my mates, and all the other fellow 'Jungle Bunnies' and 'Swamp Rats' that I met, to those that have gone before, and those who one way or another will surely come after. Take care dear hearts, I wish you well.
I shall be 60 soon I said to myself as I carried on shaving, watching the hot water strike the cold enamel and creating clouds of steam. Considering what I like others were once a part of, life and all it can throw at you hasn't been all that bad.. I look at my reflection in a steamed up mirror at a much younger man dressed in jungle green and ask in the third person, well what about you?
The younger man of forty years before replies, "Well you haven't been back to Borneo have you? Considering the effect it has had on your life, I would have thought at least one trip is in order if only as an acknowledgement of the inner strength you now find you have at your disposal".
Thirty years before, when in uniform, I had some personal effects stolen from my heavy baggage when it was in rear party stores. I was extremely angry about that, because some of those items were valuable, were destined as presents for my family, and others had a value of another kind. A few years back, I received a parcel with a London postmark. In it were some photograph albums I had all but forgotten about. There was a short letter with them too. It said, "sorry I took those things, it's taken me a long, long, time to realise that of all the things some people tend to collect and keep, photographs are in a sense the most valuable of all". Think about that dear hearts, clearly someone had spent a great deal of time and effort over many years trying to locate me just to say "sorry". Morever, they had kept my albums all those years.
The effect of this was something so complete that I had this vision of a younger man in jungle green, not so much as someone directly observed, but as the face and figure of someone who had crept up silently behind me and was looking over my shoulder into a mirror where his reflection joined mine on that quicksilver surface. I had a feeling then, which I have always had in a sense but which has grown more profound over the years that everything is much more at a given moment that it appears to be and than we can conceive. Continued here...
