Poem of the week: Glory of Women by Siegfried Sassoon

I am of the age now where I 'ponder' a lot. I suppose that it is the mental version of 'pottering,' which I also do a lot of these days. 

Approaching 50, I have almost half a century of memories, recollections, (mistakes!) and experience of life. It does not make one any better, just gives a wealth of historical recollections by which to compare situations that we come across in our daily lives.

Throughout my life, I have known strong women. Women who survived through both World Wars and experienced horrors beyond imagination. I even knew a woman when I was a child and through my teenage years, who had worked down the coal mines in Durham when she was 6 years old! I was brought up around Victorian and Edwardian women, now spanning three distinct centuries.

From the Industrial Revolution, through the Space Age and the Cold War, to the Modern Digital Age, women have dealt with the consequences of the actions and laws of the male of the species.

I was doing a little research about the 'Unknown Warrior' recently and was shocked to read that among the dignitaries and armed services, were 100 women who had lost both their husbands and all of their sons during the 1914-18 War! Among all of the women that I knew of that generation, may I have known (without knowing) women with this legacy of grief? The question is rhetorical, I will never know.

Recently, the world was shocked by the brutal murder of Drummer Lee Rigby. As ever in history, out of the crowds of witnesses, like angels around the manger, three women came forward.

Ingrid Loyau-Kennett confronted one of the killers (still holding a kitchen knife and a hatchet), and tried to reason with him, with no thought of her own safety. Amanda and Gemini Donnelly-Martin (mother and daughter) asked the killers for permission before going to comfort, cradle and pray with the slain man as he lay in the road.

To witnesses around the world, these were brave heroes. To the women, they were mothers, daughters, sisters. They did nothing special, just what was right in for them to do in the circumstances. (see: http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/woolwich-attack-three-brave-angels-1907856)

There have been many bad women in history, but far more that have just done 'the right thing in the circumstances', being mother, sister, daughter to those they have found in need, the vast majority never known to anyone else but the individuals involved, the simple hand that reaches out to the stranger in need.

Glory of Women

You love us when we're heroes, home on leave,

Or wounded in a memorable place.

You worship decorations; you believe

That chivalry redeems the war's disgrace.

You make us shells, You listen with delight,

By tales of dirt and danger fondly thrilled.

You crown our distant ardours while we fight,

And mourn our laurelled memories when we're killed.

You can't believe that British troops 'retire'

When hell's last horror breaks them, and they run,

Trampling the terrible corpses - blind with blood,

O German mother dreaming by the fire,

While you are knitting socks to send your son

His face is trodden deeper in the mud.

Seigried Sassoon