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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=459642" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Dick Fozard's Wartime Navy Knife</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=459642" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">I’m not one for mementoes – Grandma<br>in sepia, pie-crust necked and pleated blouse, <br>expressionless amidst her dressed-up, mixed-up brood; chic aunt<br>with that hundred-watt smile which clicked<br>off, the instant the shutter clicked…but now</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=459642" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">I’m holding this kitchen knife.<br>It’s got a triangular blade to allow<br>for that quick chop-chop of the trained cook<br>or kitchen-hand; black, dulled ebonite handle; <br>and although it’s made in Sheffield, <br>by Geo.Watt,1943, it’s not stainless steel<br>but stained iron; sharp, but not too dangerous<br>when used in the cook’s galley of a hungry ship of the unslept<br>that’s simultaneously zigzagging to avoid torpedoes<br>and kamikaze dive-bombers, while buffeting through<br>the South China Seas. The ‘ broad arrow’<br>stamped on it – as once used to pattern convicts' clothes –<br>here means, that it was wartime issue.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=459642" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Dick trained as artist and lithographer’s apprentice<br>just in time not to hone his talents when called up<br>to fight the Japs in that nasty, ruthless end-campaign<br>when Europe had declared peace, but not Japan.<br>He wouldn’t talk of it; and when a few years back<br>someone saw and remembered him from then, he<br>shook hands warmly, said little, left it to the other jacktar<br>to tell the story when he’d gone. And went back to find himself again, <br>walking the Yorkshire hills and dales with rucksack, pipe, a crust, <br>an onion, cheese, cut I guess with this same knife, and<br>missing nothing with his artist’s vision; <br>beyond solitude; content; complete.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=459642" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">He never really used his part-developed skills again<br>except to teach, with few words but with superb craftsman’s care, <br>leaving a trail of devoted pupils: ‘He taught me all I know’. </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=459642" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Only those, perhaps, who know war, <br>can know peace in this way, asking nothing; to know him<br>(but careful not to question) was to know a little of that peace<br>deep within the sea of himself, the sea<br>which holds so many souls. </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=459642" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">When he moved on, as he often did, <br>he left his knife. I use it every day, <br>remembering this man who was just one<br>who knew, lived, war, quietly guarding his memories<br>of pain with love, of love with pain.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=459642" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">I sharpen it, like a memory<br>I do not have. Like one who prays<br>devoutly, to that unknown god<br>of war; who may, in ways we cannot understand, <br>guard such souls.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><a href="http://poems.citatepedia.com/">poem</a> by <strong><a rel="author" href="http://authors.citatepedia.com/by.php?a=Michael+Shepherd">Michael Shepherd</a></strong></div>