I Have Lived in a Time of Heroes

I have lived in a time of heroes

And heroines; of great objectors

To subjection and persecution.

I have rubbed rough shoulders

With unnumbered unknown soldiers

Dead in their tens of thousands.

The working men who saved Madrid,

Those lads that fell at Alamein

At Arnhem and at Stalingrad.

These were my comrades, my companions,

Civilians, conscripts, partisans,

Who did great deeds to win hard victory.

In unremembered graves they lie

Untrumpeted, their songs forgotten

Our children are not taught their history.

And you forget them at your peril

For though you fight as well as they

You’ll be betrayed, as we were.