I recall I sat on the porch that night, Sipping whisky, straight and neat
Watching tiny goblins and lanterns bright Flitting up and down the street,
But I don't recall his approach at all; He just suddenly came into view,
Walking straight and tall by my garden wall And I greeted him as I would you.
"Good evening, soldier. God save the Queen! " I toasted him.
"Slake your thirst With some good malt Scotch, for it's Halloween, October the thirty first.
The kid's are all out in the neighbourhood
And I'm drinking some lonely toasts
To the wee folk, there, to my own childhood,
To the darkness and the ghosts!"
He turned and eyed me - I'd never seen His face in my life before.
"Sure," he said. "I'll be happy to toast Halloween - Halloween, nineteen forty four."
He crossed the lawn and he shook my hand
And I cheerfully poured him a glass.
I assumed from his clothing he played in a band;
He was kilted and glittering with brass.
He proposed "The Calgary Highlanders!" We downed it. I poured us one more.
"To the Walcheren Causeway!" he said. "Halloween, Nineteen hundred and forty four! "
"To the what?" I enquired, and his eyes went blank
And a strange look came over his face
And, embarrassed, I flushed and my self-esteem sank,
For I felt myself, somehow, disgraced.
"The Walcheren Causeway." He said it again.
"It's a roadway; a long, narrow belt
Of a road built out over the water and fen To a Dutch island, out on the Scheldt.
Just a high, built-up roadway; flat; narrow; exposed
To the wind and the rain and the sleet.
God! The first time we saw it, we never supposed
We'd be crossing the thing on our feet.
"It was two thousand yards long, and each exposed foot
Of it made it a breeze to defend
For the Germans who held it; you see, they could shoot
From the roadblock they'd built at their end.
"I know two thousand yards may not seem much by day
when you're taking a stroll with your sons,
But at night, in a fight, it's a long, long way
When you're facing an enemy's guns.
"They had told us at first we'd be crossing in boats
To assault Middelburg 'cross the Slooe,
But the mud was as thick as the fear in our throats
And it stuck our assault craft like glue.
"Yet we had to cross over; we had to attack;
And by land, there was only one route
And that route was the Causeway;
straight, long, bare and black.
"Well, the Highlanders moved in on foot
Under cover of darkness with no place to halt;
No surprise; no maneuvering room; Just a mad, midnight dash;
a straight frontal assault Into blackness, confusion and doom.
"Jerry's mortars and field guns were well zeroed in,
And the roadblock machine guns, as well,
But we had to approach them, engage them, and win,
So we charged them, like bats out of Hell!
"All the guns, theirs and ours, turned the night into day
And the shell splinters, bullets and stone
Fragments turned the air solid and slaughtered men lay
Where they fell, lifeless, limp and alone.
"Twelve Platoon of B Company took the full force
Of a hellish, defensive crossfire;
They were out in the front, unprotected, of course,
And B Company had to retire.
"Daybreak came, and the sight of that shell shattered road
Would have riven an archangel's brain,
But D Company moved forward and took up the load
And the whole place erupted again.
"How they did it, God knows, but they went all the way
Where no human could hope to survive,
And they captured the roadblock; they carried the day
And the rest of us crossed there alive.
"Like the Light Brigade charging the jaws of death,
Riding into the mouth of Hun,
They smelled the stink of the Demon's breath
As they friends and their messmates fell.
"Like their Highlander forbears who fought with pride
On the rolling Zulu veldt,
They faced extinction and stemmed its tide
On that Causeway over the Scheldt.
"Like their Sister Regiment's Thin Red Line On the Balaclavan clay,
They defied false gods for the narrow spine Of the Walcheren Causeway.
As the Calgary men took St. Julien
In the War that had gone before,
These ones captured the Causeway to Walcheren
And distinguished the oakleaf they wore."
His voice tailed away and he stared at me
And between us, a silence hung;
As I reached for the bottle to charge his glass,
I was thinking he looked too young
To have seen the things he said he'd seen;
But then shock unhinged my jaw,
For the chair sat empty, where he had been
And the night had turned cold and raw.
I jumped up and ran to the garden wall
And I searched the empty street
But I saw no sign of him at all
And I heard no sound of feet.
Then his voice said, clearly, "To Walcheren:
Don't forget!" inside my head,
And I shivered and turned, and went slowly in
To a sleepless, comfortless bed.
Watching tiny goblins and lanterns bright Flitting up and down the street,
But I don't recall his approach at all; He just suddenly came into view,
Walking straight and tall by my garden wall And I greeted him as I would you.
"Good evening, soldier. God save the Queen! " I toasted him.
"Slake your thirst With some good malt Scotch, for it's Halloween, October the thirty first.
The kid's are all out in the neighbourhood
And I'm drinking some lonely toasts
To the wee folk, there, to my own childhood,
To the darkness and the ghosts!"
He turned and eyed me - I'd never seen His face in my life before.
"Sure," he said. "I'll be happy to toast Halloween - Halloween, nineteen forty four."
He crossed the lawn and he shook my hand
And I cheerfully poured him a glass.
I assumed from his clothing he played in a band;
He was kilted and glittering with brass.
He proposed "The Calgary Highlanders!" We downed it. I poured us one more.
"To the Walcheren Causeway!" he said. "Halloween, Nineteen hundred and forty four! "
"To the what?" I enquired, and his eyes went blank
And a strange look came over his face
And, embarrassed, I flushed and my self-esteem sank,
For I felt myself, somehow, disgraced.
"The Walcheren Causeway." He said it again.
"It's a roadway; a long, narrow belt
Of a road built out over the water and fen To a Dutch island, out on the Scheldt.
Just a high, built-up roadway; flat; narrow; exposed
To the wind and the rain and the sleet.
God! The first time we saw it, we never supposed
We'd be crossing the thing on our feet.
"It was two thousand yards long, and each exposed foot
Of it made it a breeze to defend
For the Germans who held it; you see, they could shoot
From the roadblock they'd built at their end.
"I know two thousand yards may not seem much by day
when you're taking a stroll with your sons,
But at night, in a fight, it's a long, long way
When you're facing an enemy's guns.
"They had told us at first we'd be crossing in boats
To assault Middelburg 'cross the Slooe,
But the mud was as thick as the fear in our throats
And it stuck our assault craft like glue.
"Yet we had to cross over; we had to attack;
And by land, there was only one route
And that route was the Causeway;
straight, long, bare and black.
"Well, the Highlanders moved in on foot
Under cover of darkness with no place to halt;
No surprise; no maneuvering room; Just a mad, midnight dash;
a straight frontal assault Into blackness, confusion and doom.
"Jerry's mortars and field guns were well zeroed in,
And the roadblock machine guns, as well,
But we had to approach them, engage them, and win,
So we charged them, like bats out of Hell!
"All the guns, theirs and ours, turned the night into day
And the shell splinters, bullets and stone
Fragments turned the air solid and slaughtered men lay
Where they fell, lifeless, limp and alone.
"Twelve Platoon of B Company took the full force
Of a hellish, defensive crossfire;
They were out in the front, unprotected, of course,
And B Company had to retire.
"Daybreak came, and the sight of that shell shattered road
Would have riven an archangel's brain,
But D Company moved forward and took up the load
And the whole place erupted again.
"How they did it, God knows, but they went all the way
Where no human could hope to survive,
And they captured the roadblock; they carried the day
And the rest of us crossed there alive.
"Like the Light Brigade charging the jaws of death,
Riding into the mouth of Hun,
They smelled the stink of the Demon's breath
As they friends and their messmates fell.
"Like their Highlander forbears who fought with pride
On the rolling Zulu veldt,
They faced extinction and stemmed its tide
On that Causeway over the Scheldt.
"Like their Sister Regiment's Thin Red Line On the Balaclavan clay,
They defied false gods for the narrow spine Of the Walcheren Causeway.
As the Calgary men took St. Julien
In the War that had gone before,
These ones captured the Causeway to Walcheren
And distinguished the oakleaf they wore."
His voice tailed away and he stared at me
And between us, a silence hung;
As I reached for the bottle to charge his glass,
I was thinking he looked too young
To have seen the things he said he'd seen;
But then shock unhinged my jaw,
For the chair sat empty, where he had been
And the night had turned cold and raw.
I jumped up and ran to the garden wall
And I searched the empty street
But I saw no sign of him at all
And I heard no sound of feet.
Then his voice said, clearly, "To Walcheren:
Don't forget!" inside my head,
And I shivered and turned, and went slowly in
To a sleepless, comfortless bed.
