Silent Night – from Scotland to Sandy Hook.

14 Friday Dec 2018

Posted by Editor in Dunblane, Guns, Memoir, Newtown, School shootings, Themes of childhood

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Barack Obama, christmas, Connecticut, Dunblane, Dunblane Primary School, gun control, gun violence, Gwen Mayor, John Petrie, mass shooting, Memoir, Mr. Rogers, Newtown Connecticut, President Obama, Sandy Hook, Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, school shooting, Scotland, teacher heroes, Themes of childhood

December 14, 2012

Cold and lifeless, the bodies of twenty little children lie where they were gunned down that morning at Sandy Hook Elementary School. It is a crime scene that the day before was a school. The medical examiner’s team begins its work through the night to make sure there are no mistakes, no shadow of doubt about the names of those children – 12 girls, eight boys – along with those of six women shot at close range by a 20 year-old man, whose name everyone now knows.

Later, a state trooper is assigned to each anguished family in close-knit Newtown, Connecticut, as they wait for confirmation of what they already know. And stunned families all around the world will ask why . . .

Why?

We have been in this place before and again and again.

It was the morning of March 13, 1996, when the clocks stopped in the sleepy village of Dunblane, Scotland. Teacher, Gwen Mayor, was with her Primary One pupils – just 5 and 6 years old – in the assembly hall of Dunblane Primary School when the nightmare began. It was just another Wednesday morning in PE when a 43 year old man on a shooting rampage burst inside, shooting indiscriminately at teachers and children, before turning the gun on himself. His attack lasted three crazed, interminable minutes, during which Ms. Mayor did what teachers at Sandy Hook would do seventeen years later – everything they could to shield their students from the gunfire, to provide shelter from the storm.

There are no words, and there is no way to explain to our children or to each other how a man could stroll into a school with four handguns and over 700 rounds of ammunition and start to shoot, the carnage coming to an end only after he turned the gun on himself. And then seventeen years later, still no words, still no way to comprehend how a young man could kill his mother in her bed, then get in her car and drive to an elementary school where he would kill 20 children – aged six and seven – and six adults, before killing himself. We know not why. We know only what they did and what they left behind and that what they did forever changed two tiny places, an ocean apart.

Watching from afar, I am struck by the noblest expressions of humanity that emerge from such tragedy; by the immeasurable kindness of those people Mr. Rogers calls “the helpers.”

When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, “Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.” To this day, especially in times of “disaster,” I remember my mother’s words and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers – so many caring people in this world.

We can all be helpers, as a heartbroken President Obama reminded us in the wake of the Newtown massacre, because “while nothing can fill the space of a lost child or loved one, all of us can extend a hand to those in need, to remind them that we are there for them, that we are praying for them, that the love they felt for those they lost endures not just in their memories, but also in ours.”

This silent night, I am remembering again Dunblane and those little children who would be all grown up now with driving licenses and jobs, college degrees, marriages, mortgages, perhaps even children of their own. Like many of us, they would be planning for Christmas, hanging lights, trimming the tree, wrapping gifts, spending too much. But these will remain unfulfilled wishes for 16 children taken from us by a former Boy Scout leader with a pair of pliers, four handguns, and 700 rounds of ammunition. A man who slipped into their little school and opened fire.

“So many names, there is barely room on the walls of the heart.” BILLY COLLINS

Victoria Clydesdale, 5

Emma Crozier, 5

Melissa Currie, 5

Charlotte Dunn, 5

Kevin Hasell, 5

Ross Irvine, 5

David Kerr, 5

Mhairi McBeath, 5

Brett McKinnon, 6

Abigail McLennan, 5

Emily Morton, 5

Sophie North, 5

John Petrie, 5

Joanna Ross, 5

Hannah Scott, 5

Megan Turner, 5

Another Ulster Twilight

10 Monday Dec 2018

Posted by Editor in Aging, An Ulster Twilight, Castledawson, Christmas, Dispatch from the Diaspora, Father Daughter Relationships, Northern Ireland, Northern Ireland Culture, Ordinary Things, Seamus Heaney, Themes of childhood

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"An Ulster Twilight", christmas, Father, First bicycle, Seamus Heaney

It is Christmas morning, 1967, in a modest house on Antrim’s Dublin Road. With a big satin bow in her hair, the little girl is the picture of happiness, wrapped up in an outfit her mother knit for the occasion. Santa has left a new bicycle. It is her first, and it is equipped with stabilizers. Stabilizers – her first big word. Even now, I like saying the word and conjuring all it connotes – stability, steadfastness, a firm hold, balance. By all accounts, Santa had not read MIT engineering professor David Gordon Wilson’s Bicycling Science in which the professor wholly dismisses training wheels, pointing out, obviously, that they do not teach how to balance; they teach how to pedal. Because bicycling is the quintessential balancing act, Wilson advises instead to “adjust the bicycle’s seat low enough for children to plant their feet on the ground and practice by coasting down the grassy slopes.” No wonder we are unsure when we push off that first time without training wheels. We have to learn how to balance, much like the way we are expected to swim if we are thrown in the deep end.

But this recollection is not about the bicycle or the little girl on it. It is about the green crib in the bottom corner of the photograph. My father made it for Gloria, my first doll. He wouldn’t have known it at the time, but my father could have been Eric Dawson on Christmas Eve in “An Ulster Twilight.” Like his namesake, he belongs in a Heaney poem, adept in all his balancing acts.

Good with his hands and frugal, da’s artisinal handiwork is the kind that imbues the Derry townlands he crossed on a motorbike in the early 1960s. He tells me it began as a matter of economic necessity – the farming and the gardening, the turf-cutting and roof-thatching, the craft and the carpentry all shaping and shaped by his home-place.

Older – and presumably wiser – I appreciate my father’s frugality and the way he crafted a thing to last. In my mind’s eye, I see him doing the mental arithmetic, sizing up the situation, cutting no corners. “If you’re going to do it, do it right.”

At eighty, he is acutely aware of the miles between us and harbors a yearning to be just down the road, to make things and make things right for his grand-daughter and me. There’s the mantlepiece I’ve wanted since 1993, and the fascia board needs more than paint. I don’t know why I don’t remember to wind the Regulator clock he found for me in a Phoenix thrift shop six Christmases ago or make the effort to make my windows sparkle with newspaper soaked in vinegar and elbow grease. It would be no bother for him to mix cement to repair the brick mailbox again, or to show Sophie how to put windshield washer fluid in her car.

Once upon a time I had no time for what I construed as his obsessiveness, no tolerance for his sense of urgency over why all these things need fixing. I didn’t understand. I understand now. I understand that each of us wants to fix the unfixable, to live forever so our children will never experience something as minor as a flat tire or as heart-wrenching as the loss of those we love. We want to make the magic last, to stretch time and close distance, and find the right words right when we need them.

With so many minutes and miles between us, it startles me sometimes to take stock of the things I traded for a life in America – bits and pieces of homespun wisdom from the heart of rural Derry, the gardening tips and home improvement projects that would have colored our lives had we lived just up the road. It is from too far away, relying heavily on photographs and phone calls, brown paper packages and greeting cards, texts and status updates on Facebook, that da has transformed into the grandfather he was always meant to be, eager for news of his granddaughter’s accomplishments that will be broadcast over hill and dale. He will not admit that he likes the “new-fangled” technology – but secretly I think he loves it. He can read his favorite passages from the Bible on my mother’s iPad or Google the answers to questions about the Japanese Maple trees he tends in his garden. He can ask Alexa about the weather forecast or for assistance on the daily crossword. Such virtual connections soften the blow of time and distance.

He is sentimental, my da. I am too. Seeing the photo of his daughter on her first bicycle will bring a smile. I can imagine him standing over my mother’s shoulder, curiosity and anticipation twinkling behind his reading glasses. Together, they will ponder Eric Dawson and wonder which Dawson he is. “Would he be anything to Jack Dawson, do you think?” My mother a childhood neighbor of the Heaneys, she will know. Once they place him, da will return to the picture and wonder aloud where in the name of God the past fifty odd years have gone, and under his breath, a “Boys a dear,” before he falls silent, remembering the night he made Christmas for his wee girl.

An Ulster Twilight by Seamus Heaney

The bare bulb, a scatter of nails,
Shelved timber, glinting chisels:
In a shed of corrugated iron
Eric Dawson stoops to his plane

At five o’clock on a Christmas Eve.
Carpenter’s pencil next, the spoke-shave,
Fretsaw, auger, rasp and awl,
A rub with a rag of linseed oil.

A mile away it was taking shape,
The hulk of a toy battleship,
As waterbuckets iced and frost
Hardened the quiet on roof and post.

Where is he now?
There were fifteen years between us two
That night I strained to hear the bells
Of a sleigh of the mind and heard him pedal

Into our lane, get off at the gable,
Steady his Raleigh bicycle
Against the whitewash, stand to make sure
The house was quiet, knock at the door

And hand his parcel to a peering woman:
“I suppose you thought I was never coming.”
Eric, tonight I saw it all
Like shadows on your workshop wall,

Smelled wood shavings under the bench,
Weighed the cold steel monkey-wrench
In my soft hand, then stood at the road
To watch your wavering tail-light fade

And knew that if we met again
In an Ulster twilight we would begin
And end whatever we might say
In a speech all toys and carpentry,

A doorstep courtesy to shun
Your father’s uniform and gun,
But—now that I have said it out—
Maybe none the worse for that.

* * * * * * * *

~ Merry Christmas everyone.

naming names – 9.11

10 Monday Sep 2018

Posted by Editor in 9/11, Anything can Happen, Billy Collins, Healing Field Tempe, Memoir, Remembering September 11th, Seamus Heaney, Terrorism, Themes of childhood

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9.11, Amazing Grace, American Airlines Flight 77, Billy Collins, Daily Show, Healing Field, Irish DIASPORA, Juiana McCourt Children's Education Fund, Juliana Valentine McCourt, Love, mother daughter relationship, Pentagon, Politics, September 11 2001, Taps, terrorism, The Names, Themes of childhood, United Airlines Flight 175, War, World Trade Center

Flanked by row upon row of flagpoles set five feet apart, we can stretch out our arms to touch two lives at a time, lest we forget what happened on September 11, 2001. The 9.11 memorial in Tempe, Arizona, is heartbreakingly beautiful, each one of its 2,996 flags signifying a life taken on that horrific autumn morning.

We first visited the memorial in 2012. I remember watching as my daughter walked away from me, a somber and solitary figure cutting a new path deep into the Healing Field of red, white, and blue. I was undone by the sheer enormity of the memorial and her diminished stature in it. I had to force myself to look away to remember the way we were that September morning when I dropped her off at pre-school. And in that blink of an eye, she vanished into the field of flags. Instinctively I knew she was not lost, but the very thought of it is still what scares me most.

In 2001, September 11th fell on a Tuesday and began with a little girl only a few months older than mine, boarding United Airlines Flight 175. Just four years old, Juliana Valentine McCourt, and her mother, an Irish immigrant, were on their way to Disneyland, the “happiest place on earth.”

Juliana and her mom were best friends, close as sisters. They were traveling together to California.

Close. Like my daughter and me on our trips from Phoenix to Newark, Newark to Belfast, and back again.

Close. Even when we were rendered illogical and unreasonable, she by raging adolescent hormones, me by the effects of cancer treatment, I recall we were – and still are – as two peas in a pod.

We have the same hands. We love dark chocolate-covered almonds, pancakes, and the smell of books. We love two little chihuahuas that compete for our attention. We binge-watch Netflix originals – me on Ozark, she on re-runs of Law and Order. We love each other and know we filled the heart of the man who died when we were far away from him and home one November.

We know anything can happen, but sometimes we forget.

Juliana and her mother died on September 11, 2001, on the plane that plunged through the South Tower of the World Trade Center with horrifying velocity. In Washington, D.C., Dana and Zoe Falkenberg died too. Just 3 and 8, they had boarded American Airlines Flight 77 with their parents, beginning a dream trip to Australia. And then when terrorists hijacked their plane and crashed it into the Pentagon, they were gone too. So many dead, so many names:

So many names, there is barely room on the walls of the heart

The colorful tulle butterflies attached to the flagpoles in the Healing Field and the stuffed bears on the grass remind me again that terrorism is an awful equalizer. Children, parents, grandparents, and those without names or families or homes or good health – it matters not – in a terrorist attack, they are all legitimate targets.

In the Field every year there are shows of patriotism and silent prayers for the dead; a mournful “Taps” pierces the desert air and then Amazing Grace.

Yellow ribbons wrapped around and around those flagpoles encircling the field represent the valor of those “first responders,” whose duty is to protect and serve those within. Ribbons as blue as that September morning sky are wound around flagpoles in the heart of the Field, for the flight crew members who perished. And, on the grass, for all the veterans who perished that day, pair after pair of combat boots.

In cities here and across the globe, wreaths are laid, bells ring out, and names are rubbed in pencil on cherished scraps of paper. We say their names.

Juliana Valentine McCourt. She would be in college now, Disneyland days with her mom perhaps less appealing than thoughts of a new car or a part-time job to help pay for tuition. Such a trajectory is only in my imagination. For Juliana, there was no Disneyland, no first day of school, no soft place to fall.

So we will remember them. We will lower our flags and watch again the footage of the World Trade Center’s final moments on television retrospectives. Our politicians will pay their respects after which some of them will resume campaign trails that are not always respectful.

9.11 is history.

My daughter tells me that in her final year of high school not one of her teachers remembered it out loud. Ostensibly, it was no different than the day before, no different than September 10, 2001, when Ruth McCourt was packing for a trip to Disneyland with her daughter, Juliana.

“The Names” is in dedication to all the victims of September 11 and their survivors. Poet Laureate of the United States, Billy Collins, is one of those brilliant poets who uses words and rhythms to cut through with clarity and compassion to the heart of a matter, right when we need it most:

The Names – Billy Collins

Yesterday, I lay awake in the palm of the night.

A soft rain stole in, unhelped by any breeze,
And when I saw the silver glaze on the windows,
I started with A, with Ackerman, as it happened,

Then Baxter and Calabro,
Davis and Eberling, names falling into place
As droplets fell through the dark.
Names printed on the ceiling of the night.
Names slipping around a watery bend.
Twenty-six willows on the banks of a stream.
In the morning, I walked out barefoot
Among thousands of flowers
Heavy with dew like the eyes of tears,
And each had a name —
Fiori inscribed on a yellow petal
Then Gonzalez and Han, Ishikawa and Jenkins.
Names written in the air
And stitched into the cloth of the day.
A name under a photograph taped to a mailbox.
Monogram on a torn shirt,
I see you spelled out on storefront windows
And on the bright unfurled awnings of this city.
I say the syllables as I turn a corner —
Kelly and Lee,
Medina, Nardella, and O’Connor.
When I peer into the woods,
I see a thick tangle where letters are hidden
As in a puzzle concocted for children.
Parker and Quigley in the twigs of an ash,
Rizzo, Schubert, Torres, and Upton,
Secrets in the boughs of an ancient maple.
Names written in the pale sky.
Names rising in the updraft amid buildings.
Names silent in stone
Or cried out behind a door.
Names blown over the earth and out to sea.
In the evening — weakening light, the last swallows.
A boy on a lake lifts his oars.
A woman by a window puts a match to a candle,
And the names are outlined on the rose clouds —
Vanacore and Wallace,
(let X stand, if it can, for the ones unfound)
Then Young and Ziminsky, the final jolt of Z.
Names etched on the head of a pin.
One name spanning a bridge, another undergoing a tunnel.
A blue name needled into the skin.
Names of citizens, workers, mothers and fathers,
The bright-eyed daughter, the quick son.
Alphabet of names in a green field.
Names in the small tracks of birds.
Names lifted from a hat
Or balanced on the tip of the tongue.
Names wheeled into the dim warehouse of memory.
So many names, there is barely room on the walls of the heart.

by Billy Collins, June 24, 2005

At this moment, bear in mind Omagh.

14 Tuesday Aug 2018

Posted by Editor in Birthdays, bombing, IRA, John Hewitt, Loughinisland, Memoir, Northern Ireland, Omagh, Peace, Sectarianism, The Good Friday Agreement, The Peace Process, The Troubles, Themes of childhood, UVF, W.B. Yeats

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"Neither an Elegy nor a Manifesto", 1994 World Cup, 2004 World Series, bombings, Boston Red Sox, Giants Stadium, Good Friday Agreement, Ireland, Irish DIASPORA, John Hewitt, New Jersey, North Antrim Coast, Northern Ireland, Omagh, REAL IRA

photo-62 As we plan to mark the 20th anniversary of the Omagh bombing, I am drawn back to the summer of 1998. A new mother, I had taken my baby daughter back home to Northern Ireland, my lovely, tragic Northern Ireland. Between my father, my brother, and a handful of relatives who could keep a secret (an impressive trait in rural County Derry) we had planned a “This is Your Life” style surprise for my mother’s sixtieth birthday. It was delicious, knowing we had all swallowed the same secret, and that my all-knowing mother was completely in the dark.

The Troubles had tainted previous visits home, but this time would be different – there would be no bombings, no shootings, no army checkpoints. There was something symbolic, magical even, in returning home with a new baby girl in my arms to a new optimism fueled by The Good Friday Agreement.

It had been different four years before. That trip had coincided with Ireland’s qualifying for the World Cup. The country was ecstatic, with factories, offices, shops, even banks, all closing early so everyone could make it home, or to the pub, in time for kick-off at the Ireland v Italy match being televised live from Giants Stadium in New Jersey. We had considered going to the pub to watch the first-round match, but my father convinced us to stay home, have a few drinks, and watch from the comfort of the living room. So we stayed in and watched – in joyous disbelief – as Ireland went up 1-0 against Italy at Giants Stadium. When the lads in green scored a goal, we roared with pride even as we were afraid to look, not unlike Boston Red Sox fans prior to the 2004 World Series.

The second half of the match was well underway when two men, their faces hidden behind balaclavas, stormed into a tiny packed pub, The Heights Bar, in the village of Loughinisland, County Down. With an AK47 and a Czech made rifle, they shot madly and indiscriminately at the sixteen men gathered around the bar watching Ireland beat Italy. They killed six of them. According to witnesses, the two gunmen laughed as they made their getaway. The first killed, Barney Green, was in his eighties, someone’s grandfather, and as I recall from the stories that later poured from that heartbroken village, he had put on his best suit to mark Ireland’s making it to the World Cup.

It chills me still to think of Barney Green struck down with such savagery in the very moment as that jubilant Irish squad burst out of an American football stadium, awash in green, buoyed by the chanting of 60,000 supporters, anticipating champagne and a night of revelry, only to be silenced and sickened by the hideous dispatch from a country pub back home. Surely that would be the last time we would hear of such horror. No. It would not.

For many Northern Ireland families, mine included, the youngest generation knew only a country in conflict. But in 1998, my daughter would witness a new country, a country at peace. The people had voted for it in anticipation of the brand new day Northern Ireland deserved.

When my mother’s sixtieth birthday arrived that year, I telephoned in the morning with love and good wishes and a promise that we would arrange a trip home soon. Yes, she had received the flowers I’d sent, and she was looking forward to going out for dinner with daddy that evening. On their way to a favorite restaurant, he took a detour for a quick visit with my Aunt Sadie, where delighted shrieks of “Surprise!”exploded from the well-hidden gathering of family and friends whose cars were parked on another lane, far out of sight. One of my cousins even assumed the role of This is Your Life host, Eamonn Andrews, complete with a big red book, and she related the story of my mother’s life to all assembled. When she reached the part about my mother becoming a grandmother for the first time just eight months earlier, she suggested calling me so I could at least be part of the celebration by phone. Naturally, I was unavailable, given that two days earlier, I had flown in to Belfast with Sophie, and had been holed up at my Aunt Sadie’s house enjoying secret visits with my dad and my brother, the three of us delighting in the fact that my mother was oblivious to all the subterfuge.

Naturally, she was disappointed that I wasn’t home when she phoned, but she was quickly distracted by the doorbell ringing. Thinking it was yet another cousin or a friend with a birthday present, she opened the door. There, looking up at her from a nest of pink blankets, was her beautiful baby granddaughter. It was a perfectly executed surprise, planned down to the very last minute, and one my mother would cherish always, as a jewel in a box.

At the same time, unbeknownst to us and to most ordinary people in Northern Ireland, another plan was coming to fruition. A diabolical scheme, it would just a week later, rip asunder the tiny market town of Omagh in the neighboring county of Tyrone, devastating families from as near as Donegal and as far away as Madrid, Spain, and reminding us all that Northern Ireland’s Troubles were far from over.

I don’t know all the details. I’m afraid of them.

It frightens me to consider the machinations of minds that could craft a plan to load a nondescript red car, plate number MDZ 5211, with 500 pounds of explosives, park it in the middle of a busy shopping area, and place two phone calls to the local television station, one to the Coleraine Samaritans, with a warning 40 minutes before the bomb inside it exploded. There was confusion as the police evacuated the shoppers – mostly mothers and children on back-to-school shopping sprees. Thinking they were moving them away from the Court House to safety, the police moved people to the bottom of Market Street, where the bomb was about to be detonated.

I wonder if they felt that familiar relief, the kind you know from past experiences of bomb-scares and hoaxes, if they felt they were out of harm’s way and just in time, believing that it would all be alright. Maybe they told themselves it was just a bomb scare, like old times, not to be taken very seriously but still they would cooperate with the authorities so they could get back to their Saturday afternoon shopping, seeking out bargains for backpacks and books, new uniforms and lunch-boxes, full of the promise that accompanies the start of a new school year.

I cannot write about it without weeping.

Spaniard Gonzalo Cavedo and child posing by the car carrying the bomb that killed 29 people, many of whom are in the picture, including the photographer. Mr. Cavedo and the child survived. (Source: Belfast Telegraph)

Mere seconds after this photo was taken with a camera later retrieved from the rubble, the 500 pound bomb inside the red car exploded, blowing the vehicle to bits. Like a butcher’s knife, the blast cut through the row of little shops. I recall the harrowing accounts of witnesses, forever altered, who saw blood flowing in the gutters and pieces of people in the street, describing the savagery, the carnage before them as a war zone, a killing field.

At the same time, my brother, his girlfriend, and my baby girl were driving around the North Antrim coast, listening to Neil Young and Paul Brady CDs, occasionally breaking into song as we took in wild scenery around us. We stopped to show Sophie the horses and cows that peered over gates along the country roads. It was a beautiful, windy Irish day, and we were happy.

We were not listening to the radio that afternoon, so we didn’t hear the news. We had no reason to believe anything was wrong, until, heading home at dusk, we were stopped at a police checkpoint, where we were told to take a detour. And we knew. It had happened again. My parents knew too. Worse, they were worried sick. Something horrific had happened, and they had no idea where we were. Worried, they paced the floor until their driveway was lit up again with the headlights of my brother’s car.

There was no peace.

Another atrocity. Another anniversary for the people of Northern Ireland that would leave us wondering how we would ever recover from the maddening, wrenching anguish that visited us once again. My country is so tiny – I’ve been told it fits into one third of the state of Kansas – that I imagine everyone knew someone who knew someone maimed or killed in the largest mass murder in its history. A relative of an Antrim barman had been killed in the Omagh bombing, and I remember wondering what I could possibly say to him by way of condolence, knowing there are no adequate words.

I felt sad and foolish. I felt cheated, having dared to believe that peace had come to the country I had left but still loved. I should have remembered what we must never forget from The Isle of Innisfree – that “peace comes dropping slow.”

Nothing had changed, and everything changed at 3:10PM when the bomb exploded, injuring over 300 and killing 29 people and unborn twins. And there would be no justice. Twenty years later, no one has been convicted.

The Omagh list of dead “reads like a microcosm of Troubles deaths, and left no section of Irish life untouched. The town they attacked is roughly 60:40 Catholic:Protestant, and the dead consisted of Protestants, Catholics, a Mormon and two Spanish visitors. They killed young, old and middle-aged, fathers, mothers, sons, daughters and grannies. They killed republicans and unionists, including a prominent local member of the Ulster Unionist Party. They killed people from the backbone of the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA). They killed unborn twins, bright students, cheery shop assistants and many young people. They killed three children from the Irish Republic who were up north on a day trip. Everyone they killed was a civilian. The toll of death was thus both extraordinarily high and extraordinarily comprehensive.”

May we never forget them.

“Neither an Elegy nor a Manifesto” by John Hewitt

So I say only: Bear in mind

Those men and lads killed in the streets;

But do not differentiate between

Those deliberately gunned down

And those caught by unaddressed bullets:

Such distinctions are not relevant . . .

Bear in mind the skipping child hit

By the anonymous ricochet . . .

And the garrulous neighbours at the bar

When the bomb exploded near them;

The gesticulating deaf-mute stilled

by the soldier’s rifle in the town square

And the policeman dismembered by the booby trap

in the car . . .

Patriotism has to do with keeping

the country in good heart, the community

ordered by justice and mercy;

these will enlist loyalty and courage often,

and sacrifice, sometimes even martyrdom.

Bear these eventualities in mind also;

they will concern you forever:

but, at this moment, bear in mind these dead.