War Words

War Words

I heard the other day of soldiers back
from serving in the fighting in Iraq,
not wounded bodily but suffering from
‘post-traumatic stress disorder’ — ‘bomb-
happy’s’ what they called it in the war
on Hitler; ‘shell-shock’ in the one before.

And then I thought, Ah yes, I can recall
D-Day, June the sixth in forty-four,
wading through chest-high waves to reach the shore
(the stretch I later learned was called Sword Beach,
a place I didn’t really wish to reach).
What I that day with many others shared
was ‘pre-traumatic stress disorder’, or,
as specialists might say, we were ‘shit-scared’.
Vernon Scannell