In the summer of 1945, in Holland awaiting repatriation, my father wrote and distributed a tabloid magazine for the members of his Royal Regiment group. Of course it included an interview with his chaplain and personal friend, Rev. Curry, who gave him some packages from home that could not be delivered, to help out. Thus my father “sold dead men’s cigarettes on the streets of Utrecht to pay the printer.” Here’s a poem I wrote much later:

VE Day

The day peace was declared

he stood ankle deep in the flooded Rhine.

While squadrons of air command passed overhead

he walked out into a pitted field

and said to himself, What now?

I’m out of a job.

 

That summer he kept busy

writing, designing, collecting stories

for his regiment’s tabloid.

Sold dead men’s cigarettes on the streets of Utrecht

to pay the printer.

 

At home he worked behind a desk

accounting for products he had no hand in.

He ran an office here or there,

moved cities, joined clubs, had a hobby or two.

 

And on cool spring nights

he sometimes went walking

out beyond the streetlights where

he’d stop and stare up

at the starless sky.

 

• Colin Morton