remembering

dad would have been 101 today
this was his favourite place.  
he made a promise to himself, sitting in his tank after the Normandy landings,  to buy this home if he survived.

he survived because of the wonder drug penicillin 
his shrapnel load set off alarms at every airport for the rest of his life.

and then there was one of the few war stories he was ok telling:
in the 1970s he came home from a trip to the far east.  
he walked to the something to declare line.

an official stepped forward and asked to shake his hand
it transpired that he remembered my dad all those years later because 
when he was being stretchered off the battlefield he was able to say thank you,