Kohima 1954

Returning to Kohima ten years after the battle
I was guided to my battalion’s memorial
by a ten-year-old barefoot boy.
As he trotted up the track which a bulldozer had
driven,
now a leafy lane,
he explained the bullet-ridden corrugated iron
and the grass-filled foxholes.
Having led me to the place I wanted to be,
he scampered off
to re-join his playmates.

Later, in the cemetery,
I walked along the endless rows of headstones,
learning not to move too slowly,
which can cause tears,
nor yet too fast,
when numbers dull the sense of individual
tragedy.

Next morning I rose while it was dark
and went for a walk in the jungle,
seeking ghosts
but finding none.
As I stumbled through the thickets
in the mist of a rainy dawn
a bugle sounded reveille.

At that moment I understood
that life is a partnership
between the living, the dead and the unborn,
and that we, the living
have the duty
to pass to those who follow us
the wisdom and ideals
of those who have gone before us.

– Gordon Graham