The Day Dad Went To Belsen

The tank stopped abruptly And we sat open mouthed At what we beheld Our brains could not assimilate What our eyes were seeing Great mounds of …. What? It can’t be that. All the horrors of war We had witnessed, experienced Since D-day Did not prepare us For what Belsen held in store A place devoid of God A place where even birdsong was banished We dismounted and approached on foot As each step brought us closer Our worst fears were realised We saw that the mounds were indeed bodies Or something likened to bodies Then I saw an androgynous figure Stood at the fence A dirty little bag of bones Wrapped in dirty rags Bony fingers clutching the wire Like a birds feet gripping a trig I reasoned it was a girl As the rags might well have been a dress “We are English” I said “Don’t be afraid” Her fleshless face was beyond gaunt, Her shaved head little more than a skull Her huge eyes were so black and deep I could see into her soul A weak smile played round her mouth And tears welled up in her huge eyes I would not have believed it possible For her desiccated form To have held enough moisture for tears But they were there And they ran down the grubby cheeks Of the little bag of bones And dripped onto her ragged dress We ran to the gates And forced them open Then we stepped into the jaws of hell More skeletal figure appeared From amidst the piles of rotting corpses Bemused and disbelieving They hugged us, and thanked us Some cried, some laughed We gave them water And fed them our rations Not realising we were finishing What the Germans had started The food was too rich For their weak emaciated bodies What we didn’t realise Was we were killing them with kindness The girls name was Elise She was the same age as me But she died the next day Her face with the huge tear filled eyes Haunted my dreams All of the days of my life Penetrating my soul And breaking my heart My only consolation Was that she at least knew kindness Once more before she died