The Life that I Have.

The life that I have is all that I have,
And the life that I have is yours.
The love that I have of the life that I have,
Is yours and yours and yours.

A sleep I shall have
A rest I shall have,
Yet death will be but a pause,
For the peace of my years in the long green grass
Will be yours and yours and yours.

                                                                         by Leo Marks    

Leo Marks wrote, in 1989 :  
'By March 1944 agents were using codes printed on silk.  But if agents lost them they had to rely on poems they had memorised.  For security reasons, it was important that these poems were original compositions.  In all I wrote 28 poems for agents.  To me they are codes rather than poems.
Violette (for whom this poem was composed) was executed at Ravensbruck.  Many of the other agents for whom I wrote poems did not return from the field, and I resolved never to write another.'

                                      Violette Szabo GC  (b1921 - executed February 1945)


Today is the 70th. Anniversary of VE Day, which was celebrated just four days before my ninth birthday and which I remember for the street parties, but today I also remember, with sadness, the terrible loss of lives, civilian and military on all sides.