No one minute's silence fro Bill.

I watched Bill die. It was on the evening June 5th in the year of our Lord 2017. Seventy three years ago Bill was but a boy of 19 years of age doing a man’s job. He would have been fearful and anxious to his very soul. The next day this lad was in the vanguard of the greatest battle invasion the world has ever seen as he charged ashore in the D- Day with his mates in the South Wales Borderers.

And gentlemen in England now abed

Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,

And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks

That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.

So says Shakespeare and oh were that but true, there was no one minute silence for Bill, no one cared.

Just two days before he died Bill turned to me and said “ I am dying, I want to go home.”  He silently cried. He did not go home but died alone except for me and my son in silent grief. Moments later curtains were drawn and Bill was gone.

And so this former great Christian nation ignored the passing of one of its heroes who, with 8 siblings fought the most bitter campaign against tyranny. No announcement in the House of regret and condolence to family and his community.

And so on the 19th June the Nation had one minutes silence for the Grenfell Tower tragedy. Now I empathise completely but stop for one moment and reflect. The greater majority of those residents were here because they had fled war, famine, pogroms, gang warfare and so on.They were here because they would get the Christian love that Bill had fought for over seven decades ago. The fire was not an act of violence upon them but the result of the fallibility of humans to allow such things as Piper Alpha, the Marchioness, Herald of Free Enterprise and so on.

So no one minute’s silence for Bill just another stain on this cabal of politicians who forget that this Nation’s greatest decorations incorporate the Cross of Our Lord symbolic of the fact that they too would lay down their lives for other folk.

Bill should have died at home in dignity, honour, and love, a Christian death.