Gavin, 5 June 04
While setting up this site I’ve had news on the TV in the background, commemorating the D-day landings. I’ve also been going through archived material from websites I have set up over the past decade. I found one page about the Sinclair family and I thought it appropriate to add a poem that my grandad, Jack Sinclair, wrote about his wartime experiences.
Jack died on 2 August 1997, aged 88. He was a stonemason and there are many buildings around the North of Scotland which are a lasting tribute to his skills. Jack introduces the poem in his own words:
“We came into Hamburg about three days before the war ended, and it had been both bombed and shelled. And it was a shambles.
A few years ago I was sitting in the car in Thurso, waiting for Teen; and you know how you hear snatches of conversation. Well I heard this voice saying: ‘We just spent three days in Hamburg…What a beautiful city’.
And this is what I wrote, because this is what I remembered about Hamburg.”
HAMBURG…A BEAUTIFUL CITY
We drove into Hamburg on a hot summer’s day
Three hundred strong in battle array
“Now stay in your wagons and keep a lookout
You never can tell if there’s snipers about.”
We came under a rail bridge and pulled up in dismay
It wasn’t a city; it was Gethsemane
Where once proud buildings rose to the sky
Were mounds of rubble that offended the eye
And over it all a deep silence lay
With that sweet sickly smell, the scent of decay.
“C’est le parfum d’une bataille”, Le Podinan said
I only knew it as the smell of the dead.
Strange moving shadows slid over the ground
Through a runnel of sand a pebble dropped down
“Them’s rats we are seeing” young Harrison said
“Jasus” said Murphy, “They’ll be ating the dead”
Someone said “Let’s get out of here quick”
Someone said”Christ”, it was me – I was sick.
So that is how we took Hamburg that day
No wild shout of triumph, no ‘Hip hip hooray’
We sat in our trucks and we bowed down our heads
“Holy Jasus” said Paddy, “They’ll be ating the dead”.
Jack Sinclair 1909-1997
