Time flies real fast these years. It’s hard
to believe that it’s the start of another year.
Happy school term!
Happy 2015-16!
This year, the term started off with a
special holiday- the 70th anniversary of the end of WWII with the
surrender of Japan. My generation and this generation are lucky as we have not
experienced war. We just heard bits and pieces from our parents on how they made
their way through in their early years. From the history books, photos and documentaries,
we saw desperate faces mourning for the loss of families and relatives; waste
land of soldiers holding on to their guns while whispering on their beds
missing their families. How sad!
I read the poem below recently and just
have to share that here. This is written by an American years ago on his father’s
experience as a soldier in the War.
Rob Walker
Three months was the least we would sail,
From Fort St. John to St. Ives,
And we set out again with one hundred-six men
In hopes we would come home alive.
The able on both sides enlisted,
To wage the Great War on their foe,
And the safety of those who were loved and held close
Was the force that compelled them to go.
This was my fourth tour of duty,
With more than our fair share of nubs,
But they would return with the lessons they'd learn,
As long as we stymied the subs.
Two ounces of rum was our issue,
To be drunk before bed for our nerves,
But we stored it away for that most fateful day
No ninety-day wonder deserves.
We checked on our stockpile of foxers
That were saving our lives by their sound,
Whenever we missed with the DCs we dished,
And the Jerry's torpedoes came round.
The Third Reich developed a missile
To skim slightly under our wake
And alter its path to deliver its wrath
To the noise the ship's engine would make.
Our Corvette could never stop moving,
For the noise from the foxer would fail,
And the racket that kept us alive would be still
And the 'fish' would be right on our tail.
The Captain had given us orders,
For whenever the engine was down,
To slip off our shoes - so we'd break out the booze
And we'd binge without making a sound.
Two weeks out of port, in the crossing,
When the spray of mid-April still bit,
In spite of the engineers' efforts,
The engine decided to quit.
The subs kept on ringing the radar,
And now we were waiting to die.
As we prayed, the mechanics, who couldn't make noise,
Had no other choice but to try.
As they laboured to fix what was broken,
The men up above faced their fear,
And no one would sleep for three days on the deep
With the prospect of drowning so near.
I saw the crew stagger and stumble
As the waves and the booze took effect,
But they knew that their eyes never would see St. Ives
If they so much as spoke on the deck.
The carryings on and the binging,
With an absolute absence of noise
Caused a fear so intense it turned boys into men
And some of the men into boys.
And somewhere above me a seabird
Looked down upon miles of sea
Where the sun on the whitecaps and wind in its wings
Must have made it feel glorious and free.
As it spotted our speck of a vessel
And thought how men must be at peace
,With forty-eight million warriors killed
And no plan to surrender or cease,
It spied this superior species
From its vantage point, miles above
And watched as the speck slowly sank out of site,
Out of hatred and fear, out of love.
The scenes depicted in the poem were so vivid and scary. I just hope there would never be any wars in the world. Unfortunately, I just had a push notification on the phone by CNN about the out flux of the refugees from Syria…
It’s still a promising sign, I would say,
that the Chinese Party Chairman, Mr Xi jin ping mentioned the reduction of the
troops and the notion of PEACE during his speech on 3/9. As an educator, how to
plant the seed of PEACE in our next generation is the biggest challenge. We ask
the students to be nice to themselves and to the others. It’s crucial to have kindness
and respect in whatever things we do every day. We should all have good
manners, good habits, and respect each other’s differences. No picking on nor
bullying others!
During the first flag raising ceremony few
days ago, I quoted a line from the Back to school speech by President Obama to
our students,
‘We should all
have a dream. But just that would not make USA strong. We need to help others
work for their dream.’
This was so true. Our success is not only
our individual success, but success of the class, the school, our hometown and
our country. We need to work in harmony as an entity.
To me, a strong country is not the one with
most troops or the most bullets, but one which embraces diversity, one with
citizens all supporting each other in harmony.
Let’s work on it. Start with
Doing a nice
thing every day!
Making no
complaints any day!
