OOSTERBEEK

Twenty-five years on:

we are back for a visit to the Airborne war graves in this little Dutch town close to Arnhem.

The military precision of row upon row of head-stones  - 1,759  young men, mostly in their twenties: UK. Polish. Canadian. Dutch. Australian. New Zealand: sons all.   

I remember my own son pondering awhile, then:

‘they’re like swans daddy, their wings spread, trying to rise from this terrible clay; imagine daddy, if they did rise, if all the swans in every war cemetery in the world rose from the terrible clay, it would darken the sky, wouldn’t  it, daddy?...

falling leaves

children throw sticks at them

tears in my wife's eyes