Gilbert

My family didn't go to war. We were farmers. The country needed its land worked, so we stayed home.

Gilbert went.

He ended up a prisoner in Italy. When it was over they left him on the coast to make his own way home to the North East. He got as far as our farm in Suffolk, and stayed forty-odd years. He raised nine children in his two-up two-down tied farm cottage.

When I was a boy he showed me the work. He was patient with me, and he deferred to me, the boss's son, though he had been to war and I had been nowhere.

I was told not to ask him about the war and he never said.

These days nearly all of us stay home. We argue and complain and protest, we offend and we're offended, and we hardly notice we're allowed to.

Somebody went so we can. For me it was Gilbert.