14. The Visitor – ‘The day my family came’

The Visitor – ‘The day my family came’

Collie Cardiff RSL Sub Branch

Saluting their Service - Grahame Old

THE VISITOR - (sometimes called ‘The Day my Family came’)

This Poem, by Michael Edwards, was written after he had visited the WW1 battlefields and the numerous war cemeteries with never ending tombstones, some with names, some simply stating ‘An Unknown Soldier of the Great War – Known only to God’.

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The Poem brought tears to my eyes when I first read it.

Battlefield tour guides provide a copy of the poem to visitors when they believe that they are the first of their family to visit a grave. The guides allow the visitors to take the copy back home with them as a physical reminder of ‘The Day My Family Came’. One visitor stated ‘I think I was the first member of my family to visit my grandfather’s grave. When there, I felt a similar sense i.e. "Where have you been? All these years and no one came to visit me’.

Patrick Lindsay in his book ‘Fromelles’, the story of Australia’s darkest day in military history, quotes philanthropist George Jones when visiting the battlefields as being overwhelmed by the scale of the human losses and the number of cemeteries dotted throughout the countryside. One cemetery in particular near Fromelles tugged at his heart. We were walking down the line of tombstones. I noticed one that read ‘an unknown Australian soldier’. The next one was ‘an unknown New Zealander’ and then an unknown British soldier. And then the next one was an ‘unknown unknown’. I was very moved by it’.

‘The Visitor’ (sometimes called ‘The Day my Family came’)

I half awoke to a strange new calm

And a sleep that would not clear

For this was the sleep to cure all harm

And which freezes all from fear.

Shot had come from left and right

With shrapnel, shell and flame

And turned my sunlit days to night

Where now none would call my name.

Years passed me by as I waited,

Missed the generations yet to come,

Sadly knew I would not be fated

To be a father, hold a son.

I heard again the sounds of war

When twenty years of sleep had gone,

For five long years, maybe more,

Till peace once more at last had come.

More years passed, new voices came,

The stones and trenches to explore,

But no-one ever called my name

So I wished and waited ever more.

Each time I thought, perhaps, perhaps,

Perhaps this time they must call me,

But they only called for other chaps,

No-one ever called to set me free.

Through years of lonely vigil kept,

To look for me they never came,

None ever searched or even wept,

Nobody stayed to speak my name.

Until that summer day I heard

Some voices soft and strained with tears,

Then I knew that they had come

To roll away those wasted years.

Their hearts felt out to hold me,

Made me whole like other men,

But they had come just me to see,

Drawing me back home with them.

Now I am at peace and free to roam

Where 'ere my family speak my name,

That day my soul was called back home

For on that day my family came.

A poem by Michael Edwards

‘The voice of a soldier buried somewhere on the Western Front. He speaks of his death and awakening, years pass and no one would call his name, he would not be a father or hold a son. He hears the sound of War again (WW2). More years passed he heard the sound of voices searching headstones to claim their sons but no one called his name. Until one day they came, weeping and reaching out to him. Now he is at peace and called back home – The day his family came’

WW1 Collie Boys

133 Collie Boys were killed in action during WW1. 80 are buried in Cemetery Graves close to where they fell, the majority being in France, Belgium and in Turkey (Gallipoli). Identified, their names are engraved on cemetery tombstones. The cemeteries are meticulously cared for by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC). 53 have no known tombstone/grave but are remembered on the following Memorials:

Lone Pine Memorial, Turkey (Gallipoli).

Villers-Bretonneux Memorial, France.

Menin Gate Memorial, Belgium.

Note: There are over 66,000 Australian war dead in identified graves around the world and another 35,000 commemorated on Memorials to the Missing. The Vietnam War was the first where war dead were returned to their loved ones in Australia for burial and commemoration. ‘Collie Boys’, L/CPL Keith Ivan Dewar and Pte James Mungo Thomas White, killed in Vietnam, are buried in the Collie Cemetery.

The Futility of War

Quote from United States President Jimmy Carter:

“War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always evil, never good. We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other’s children.”