The lord protector Oliver Cromwell
Killed thousands, the truth to tell
Beheaded the king and closed hostelries
And he cancelled the Christmas festivities
The lord protector Oliver Cromwell
Killed thousands, the truth to tell
Beheaded the king and closed hostelries
And he cancelled the Christmas festivities
“Your
country needs you,” said Kitchener
You’re
needed to fight them over there
“It will be over by Christmas,” they said
But
it was just getting started instead
In
the cold trenches on Christmas morn
The
guns remained silent after the dawn
Soon
forgetting the horrendous conditions
Men
began emerging from their positions
The
opposing soldiers met in no man’s land
Then
smiled and shook their enemy’s hand
Briefly
at peace both sides felt regrets
Then
they exchanged gifts of cigarettes
A
day without a single shot fired at all
They
even got to play a game of football
Sadly,
the men returned their own way
They
began killing again on Boxing day
The
next time you’re whining on about what a crap Christmas you had, because your
mother in law over did it on the sherry and told everyone what she really
thinks about you, or when your wife’s Uncle Stan spent Christmas afternoon
asleep on the sofa breaking wind with monotonous regularity, or your brother’s
new girlfriend, who kept hitting on your wife or your Gran who said “just a
small dinner for me I don’t have much of an appetite” then spent the afternoon
eating all the chocolate Brazils.
If
this strikes a chord think again and spare a thought for the half a million or
so men of the allied forces and six hundred thousand Germans who spent Christmas
1944 outside in the snow of the coldest winter in a generation in the Ardennes
forest during the battle of the bulge.
Men
like my father sheltering in foxholes scratched out of the frozen earth with no
hot food or drink, unable to light fires for fear of giving their position away
and regularly coming under enemy fire or being shelled, then once you’ve hewn out a decent sized
foxhole and settled down into it out of the icy wind an order comes down the
line for everyone to move out and you move a hundred yards or less and dig
another hole.
Go and tell your petty gripes to that generation and
see if you get any sympathy.