See the boats coming on mass, zoom in and see only one boat, zoom in and see the men, now only one man, now see what he sees the beach up ahead, see the D-day beach, yes, now you see it. And in this soon to explode cocktail of Normandy and Nazi death the man is waiting, with stomach knotted, heart garrotted he rides the waves. The black flack is heart pounding as the back beat to this making of history, pounding in a way none of us can ever imagine. So the man mumbles the words, fumbles the words, tumbles out the only verbs he can recall. Our father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy, and BANG. The metal hits the sand, the front drops open and the man wakes up to the nightmare of a new day, the shots come in waves, sweeping, strafing, piercing, life taking lung fulls of gunfire, bursts of hot lead squeezed out of the chests of men maddened into a frenzy. And the shots keep coming, keep coming, keep coming as the other men drop away never to move again, bullets flying straight, cruel and deadly causing fear, a fear which is hot, hot, hot against the sand. And in this bottle neck of bad ideas our is still on his feet with the thumping, thumping, pumping of the ground pounders boot he goes on, he moves on, faster overtaking slower men, dead men walking, through the sifting, sand drifting battlefield, our man moves past one and another as his feet begin to obey. The bullets ping pinging past his senses but he turns it all down to a background buzz that pitter patters out to background static so he can just think run, just think run, just keep running. Keep going, keep going, one two, one two, one two, keep moving. And his inner voice is screaming get under the guns, get under the guns, don’t think, run, don’t stop run his mind banshees at him. The wet pack is smacking against his back, the sweat is sticking gun to palm but he’s almost there, almost there, so far, so near, he can almost, almost, almost reach it. But then it happens, a grenade curls into his running but his feet won’t stop, can’t stop, don’t stop, so he counts in his head and very counts like a prayer, one, two, three, four and nothing happens, five, six, seven, eight, still nothing. It might be a dud, it must be a dud, so the feet keep pounding, the hope keeps rising the voice keeps screaming, keep breathing, keep breathing, it’s dud, it’s a dud, it must be a dud, but it’s not. The explosion ripples lazily through the air as if to stay, why rush, where you gonna go, and the blast sinks white hot and sharp into his face. He sees white with a red bored, then a black. As out man gets pulled down, down, down into the Nazi night. You see this is how my Grandfather lost his sight and sometimes when he drank he remembered and only then would he speak of it. A man who survived the war but couldn’t survive the world. And in his shell shocked peacetime afterlife he would go for his job interviews and come home with nothing because blind veterans just aren’t worth much in peace time. And in his pissed off blind rage my grandmother would smile a smile he couldn’t see and say, don’t be angry, l’m not he would say, there’s always tomorrow. And then one summers day in 1996 he left us, his heart failed and there would be no more tomorrows. No more homes for heroes, no more hope, no more dreams of better days, not for him. Don’t be angry l said to him, but l’m always angry when l’m dying. I don’t know if he’d saved this line his entire life or just thought of it on the spot. But it tells me that we’ve built men like my Grandfather monuments all over the world the world, but in November when we salute we still can’t remember their names, maybe we should because no one should be angry when their dying, no one. I suppose he was a man who believed that there would always be homes for heroes but in the end there were only graves and then he was leaving us. His heart failing and his eyes closing my grandmother leaned in to kiss his forehead. Don’t be angry, l heard her whisper, but he replied l’m always angry when l’m dying. © 2006 Scott Devon Read more about Scott and his poetry in Poets’ Profile