Elegy for My Grandfather: Remembrance Day 2024
My grandfather, Thomas McBryde, physically survived the trench warfare of World War One, including the Battle of Vimy Ridge (1917), when Canadian forces triumphed at the cost of more than 10,600 soldiers killed and wounded. Thomas McBryde screamed in his sleep throughout his long life, a victim of what his contemporaries called shellshock and what we would term post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Battle of Vimy Ridge | The Canadian Encyclopedia
Elegy for My Grandfather: Remembrance Day 2024
My grandfather did not perish in the fight;
Nor quit that hell with faculties intact.
With sleep disturbed, he screamed most every single night,
As dreams perturbed to Vimy sent him back.
He searched for music ‘til his dying day,
But found only pain, exploding in his path.
Life a battlefield, nightmares the toll to pay
For surviving while comrades felt Death’s wrath.
My grandfather left his soul on Vimy Ridge
In trenches vile, in mud and blood and rain.
His memory still serving as a bridge
To demonic war, always and again.
World War One spawned a number of poets, many of whom perished, and an array of anti-war poems that have stood the test of time, such as the powerful and bitter work Dulce et Decorum Est by Wilfred Owen, who was killed in action at the age of 25, one week before Armistice (November 1918).
Dulce et Decorum Est | The Poetry Foundation
The poem takes its its bitterly ironic title from a poem by Roman poet Horace and means “it is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country.”
Your friend,
Robert
Robert McBryde – robertmcbrydeauthor.com
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