Banzai You Bastards!
This poem is dedicated to the memory of Sergeant Jack Edwards of the 155th Field Rgt Royal Artillery (the Lanarkshire Yeomanry). Jack’s war was cruel; he was captured at the Fall of Singapore and rescued from the mines of Kinkaseki in 1945. I am proud to have known him. ‘Keep Going The Spirit that Kept Us Going’ is the motto of the Far East Prisoners of War. Listen to: Banzai You Bastards! That night we heard the echoes of his homeland, the melancholic choirs of the valleys; they brought peace to his impassioned mind, and a purpose born in purgatory. Without that choral beauty, then as now, he'd feel his anger rise to rage and burn at the trauma and injustice suffered, by those unfree, yet undefeated, men. Those exalted hymns and songs lent strength to his endurance of his slavery; the music of the valleys gave him hope, to survive the fetid mines of Kinkaseki. Hope gave him the reason to bear his scars— his shattered mind and wounds poorly healed, the damage of disease and foul ne