The Bayonet In The Shed

 

He put it there in forty nine,

in a woodworm riddled drawer,

wrapped it in a greasy rag.

A remnant from the war.

On top of it he laid his medals,

nothing more was said

until the day my father

took the bayonet from the shed.

 

We had pestered many times

and he had said ‘perhaps’

when we asked him if he’d killed

any Krauts or any Japs.

His eyes fixed on something far away,

as though searching for the dead,

but we found out what we wanted

when he took the bayonet from the shed.

 

He was a sergeant major

in the hell hole that was Burma,

where the Japanese snipers

would target you on a murmur.

He was proud of the campaign

and the boys that he had led

but he never ever talked

about the bayonet in the shed.

 

He didn’t hate all foreigners

and he said the greatest worker

that he had ever met in the war

was ‘good old Johnny Gurkha’.

That being brave wasn’t about killing,

he was happy when they fled,

then he went down the garden

and took the bayonet from the shed.

 

He was gone a short while

and when we saw him coming back

he was no longer marching proudly

along a heroes track.

We witnessed the aged warrior

return with heavy tread,

shoulders slumped in surrender

with the bayonet from the shed.

 

He moved the cloth reverently

and laid the medals by its side

and for the first time in my life

we watched as my father cried.

We sat with him and looked at it

and thought of bodies that had bled

after being introduced to

the bayonet in the shed.