Todays Haiku Heights word is Battlefield.  This stirred up lots of poems in my head ~

My father in law was in the Arctic Convoys.  He served on the destroyer HMS Liverpool guarding merchant navy vessels taking supplies to the beleaguered Russians via Murmansk.  His ship was torpedoed twice in the Mediterranean but he survived the war.

Foes in the fjords

Death lurks in depth for Allied

Atlantic convoys.

My uncle Robert fought and died in Burma as part of the “forgotten army”.  Because they had no supplies and no radios they didn’t even know that the war was over so kept on fighting.  Uncle Robert was killed after the official end of the war so his widow did not get a war pension!

Forgotten fighters

in the jungles of Burma

fought and died in vain.

Of course people at home in the UK fought their own battles and lived through countless air raids.  The things they feared most were the doodle bugs which made a dreadful whining noise overhead.  But the most worrying time was when the whining stopped, as that meant the bombs were falling! 

Air raid warning as

Doodle Bugs whine overhead.

Silence brings despair.

Many young children were evacuated from cities to relative safety in the countryside which brought its own terrors.

Evacuated!

Human fish out of water

blitzed from city homes.