The thing about war….is it shows us how to love…..

My book is essentially, if you read between the lines, a love story……an overwhelming love that lasted a lifetime for an aircraft that stole my heart aged just 16. Another love that was found in a war zone and lost on home soil, and finally a hidden love that was there all along inside me, for me, but I just couldn’t see it. But there is a fourth big love that I hope some of you may have picked up on in reading my pages….and that is the love for each and every soldier I carried into and out of the battlefield of Helmand. These soldiers and their love for one another was evident in the faces of the many stretcher bearers I saw coming over my ramp and I hope I have conveyed that in ‘The colours of their brothers’ poem in the book. It was an honour to carry our British troops over the entire span of the Op Herrick Campaign. I’ve found writing poetry extremely cathartic in my journey through PTSD. I thought I would take time to share another with you. The picture below is from one of the ramp ceremonies I speak about in the book. I always look at it with tears welling in my eyes as it is such a simple picture but says so much. At the going down of the sun and in the morning, I will always remember you, the fallen heroes of Helmand. My book is for each of you. X GS

The value of Valour

Why did we go?
What made us wave goodbye?
Was it to just pay the bills?
Or to gain a sense of pride?

Did we enjoy the danger?
Or did we just want to pull our weight?
Or did we actually believe at heart,
We could rid the world of hate?

And for those that never came home,
Was this war worth every loss?
When we count up all the coffins,
How do we even justify that cost?

Did they pay their price?
To buy that country freedom?
For the politicians 20 years later,
To decide it’s time to leave them?

I ask myself these questions?
Why I always went to the fight,
And truth be told I went to war,
For my mates both left and right.

GS

Chinook Crew ‘Chick’ is available to order here.