As we draw close to Remembrance Sunday and all the praising of the armed services I wrote this to show how we really treat those who risked their lives to protect us.

 

 

Baffling how he came to be a pauper, he thought,

An ex-serviceman, me, still with an upright back.

Thing is: I never really arrived home. Did I?. 

Not a real home. Everything had changed.

Belfast, The Falklands, Belize, Operation Desert Storm

Are with me every day.

Like many men who wore the uniform Jim is reluctant to see a doctor

"I'll be reet" he says, "after a bit."

Where he served there were No-go, No Irish, No squaddies areas

The Falls, Free Derry, Shankhill, South Armagh, Newry

Where the owner of the Armalite, the gun, was the only power, yer only man,

The Sally army bloke tells him now: "Yeah, a room, y'know, a home, your only real security."

'Doesn't know me name,' he thinks, 'fuck him'.

In his head he's already out on the street again

Not stuck in a room that drains the life out of him.

And anyway, she  moved out  decades ago,

Wanted to settle down, build up some memories.

He wished he could escape from his memories.

PTSD the nurse had said. Don't know what that is.

The images he has in his head, are still massively aflame .

And yeah a few years earlier he was a hero

But now, he was told by the bloke from the Legion,

That he needs to be careful; blokes being done for obeying orders

Being put on trial for using a gun..

Plenty of unknown soldiers he thinks, like me,

Some take to the drink, others take their own lives.

His brain is a- flame with all he knows,

And the leg where he was shot

Hurts like fuck.

He has layers over his heart, like his blankets.

Down there, inside, down there, there are levels too,

Levels of pain, of memory too,

Like the medals he once wore,

Sold, given away, lost, stolen.

Gone.