Ukraine Dispatch 30 | They Are Coming Down the Street Now
Ukraine Dispatches
Volume 1 ~ 2022
Chapter One
I
When I wrote this without prompting on the morning of 18 June 2014, I could not believe what was happening, nor could I believe that the world would not respond, quickly, decisively, ruthlessly, and yet equally so, with compassion.
I have become very cynical in these last eight years.
And then I woke up on the morning of Thursday, 24 February 2022.
II
When my parents and grandparents spoke of the dread and fear of Invasion in the hot summer of 1940 as I started asking questions about photographs, war, and people who they talked about, fourteen framed photographs in uniform on the mantelpieces of two homes two of whom I’d learned were my uncles but were no longer with us, I began to work things out, as little boys and girls do.
The one thing all six grown-ups constantly emphasized to me was the importance of Winston Churchill. I recalled my father showing me how a Messerschmitt 110 Destroyer machine-gunned the rooves of Windsor Street, our home, him looking down and seeing his father and the next-door neighbour, Mr Goldmsith, lying face down in the gutter. I went cold as I recalled Dad’s bedroom as a boy, and how, in 1956 I loved to play in there, an Aladdin’s Cave for a little one looking to build forts and place his soldiers in safe positions.
III
The threat of Invasion was warded off in the ferocious Battle of Britain.
And that battle was not fought only by white British, it was fought by thousands from what we now call the Commonwealth; it was fought furiously, aggressively, and with full prosecution by the great Polish Squadrons - 302 and 303 Squadrons of the Royal Air Force.
NEVER let it be assumed that Britain at War in 1940 was only white Brits.
But victory in battle did not mean safety. In November 1940, the centre of the great city of Coventry disappeared in less than an hour. The following morning Dad (13) accompanied his Mum by train in a mad dash to find out how our family living in Coventry was affected.
That same spirit I see all the time in Ukraine.
Churchill made it clear in his broadcasts. America could not ignore what was happening. We knew that we were on the front line of civilization.
Chapter Two
I
In 2022, this is exactly what the Sovereign nation and People of Ukraine are doing for civilization. Their war IS our war.
President Zelenskyy is the equal of Churchill.
I am quietly proud of the direct link between the Ukraine Armed Forces and the British Armed Forces. The Ukraine Armed Forces are highly professional on land, on the sea, and in the air.
I take the unusual position of placing a poem written about another conflict right here, as Ukraine Dispatch 28, because every line applies to the People of Ukraine today.
A conscript army, a reservist army, thrown into the heat of modern warfare is no match for professional armed forces, no match for NATO Forces.
Vladimir Putin is just a couple of steps away from what Adolf Hitler did in the embers of his fast-failing nation in 1944-1945 when children who refused to fight were hanged from lamp-posts. Why so? Because many in his partial national mobilization comprise mere teenagers and elderly men.
We MUST stand firm.
Thank you for reading this.
Glory to Ukraine.
Kenneth Thomas Webb
27 September 2022
Presidcent Volodomyr Zelenskyy speaking with the BBC embedded correspondent in Bucha shortly after Bucha’s Liberation
The Four Faces of Mistrust and Deceit
How we love to walk the marketplace in our resplendent robes receiving the salutations of the people …
Of course, we mean peace. We do as we say. If we say a woman shall be stoned to death, rest assured, we will be faithful to our word. If we say a woman shall be given a hundred lashes, rest assured, we will be faithful to our word. If we say that a thief shall lose his hand, and possibly a foot, again, you have our word. We are the spirit of enlightenment.
The world watched on. Yes, they are true to their word … until it comes to the matter of economy and military, democracy and freedom…
A delegate turned and whispered … and the world watched on and gasped at reality …
Why is it that when I look at these four, I seem to be looking at a world of fifteen hundred years ago, and more?
Summary Execution 18 June 2014
I MAKE no apology either for this image or this piece.
BBC World News was on. It is a sunny morning, 18 June 2014. I am preparing to head south from Liverpool in the United Kingdom. I take one last look at the headlines before setting off.
To my horror, families are being herded out by god’s thugs. This one man, besuited, looked bewildered. Surely, with the world watching on, they’d be safe?
I start my journey. At my stop-off at Knutsford services on the M6 South, I catch the update. This same gentleman. He had started his day, with his family, preparing to go to work.
A pit awaited him. god’s thugs shouted out that despicable declaration Allahu Akhbar, that curdling orgasmic cry of god’s thugs to justify their orgy of killings, deluged and deluded at the thought of endless raping of seventy vestal virgins in their idea of paradise.
And then you ask me why my faith seems not how you wish it to be?
Be away, hypocrites, all!
And we all know Who said that!!
Chapter One
They are coming down
the street now!
House to house,
door to door,
windows breaking,
children screaming,
mothers pleading,
fathers dying.
Unborn babies ripped
from wombs.
Mothers decapitated.
Fathers tortured,
the outrages witnessed
on pain of death
by the family forcibly gathered,
their punishment for apostasy
they’re told.
Sons screaming,
pleading,
defending their grandfathers!
Grandsons catapulted
in an instant,
from innocent child play
to grotesque horror,
on the baptism
of teenage arrival.
Soldiers fleeing …
weapons discarded,
uniforms thrown off,
torn off,
now naked!
running preference to combat.
Screaming,
Terror,
Mortar,
Rat-a-tat-tat of Kalashnikov …
… the baying …
In the name of Allah so say
A lie … … in truth!
Cowards face-masked
Impunity!
Atrocity!
No quarter!
Destruction!
The body is crushed!
The soul departs … … … … …
Chapter Two
... ... ... ...
Дух збирається навколо Себе
Дух собирается вокруг себя
Duch gromadzi się wokół Siebie
Dvasia telkiasi aplink save
Henki kerääntyy ympärilleen
Ånden samler sig om sig selv
Ånden samler seg rundt seg
De geest verzamelt zich om hem heen
Der Geist versammelt sich um sich
L'Esprit se rassemble autour de lui
El Espíritu se reúne a su alrededor
O Espírito se reúne em torno dele
The Spirit gathers around Himself
The Spirit gathers around her
The Spirit gathers around him
The Spirit gathers around them
A Mighty Wind
The Sound of a thousand rushing Waters
The Spirit gathers around Himself
The Spirit gathers around her
The Spirit gathers around him
The Spirit gathers around them
A Mighty Wind
The Sound of a thousand rushing Waters
Chapter Three
There is peace now
and life everlasting beyond
the maelstrom
No more pain
No more suffering
No demented inquisitions
No violent questions
No demands that infants
betray their parents
No judgment
No pleading
The truth is known
either side of the
Great Divide
The Great Being in the Skies
Ever-present
Everlasting
Calming
Assuring
The Most High Ancient of Days
The Spirit … shimmering
Words spoken
Lips not moving
They have sown the wind
They must now reap the whirlwind
Not one will survive
For it is a terrible thing
to fall into the Hands
of the LIVING GOD
... as it is written …
Stop the Car, Pull into Services, In haste, In earnest, In Eile
What I witnessed this morning on BBC World News was shocking, horrendous, utterly evil
Knutsford Services, M6 South today
11.04-11.25 am
June 18, 2014
27 September 2022
All Rights Reserved
© Kenneth Thomas Webb 2022
I end with this caption from 82 years ago. It could very easily be Kyiv, Kharkiv, Odesa, Kherson, Mariupol. KTW
Children in Trench watching the Blitz in London overhead Summer of 1940. Ukraine knows only too well this horror.
How dare a nation assume its right to enter sovereign lands, seize those lands for itself, torture and kill all who oppose, and insist to all that they are liberators.
All I see today is the evil spectre of Hitlerian plebiscites in the Sudetenland, the Port of Danzig, the German-speaking areas of Czechoslovakia, and bodies dressed up in Polish uniforms in Nazi German territory to justify the invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939.
The banner image is by courtesy www.dailytelegraph.co.uk and to whom all rights thereto are reserved and to the Artist and to the Photographer
Ken Webb is a writer and proofreader. His website, kennwebb.com, showcases his work as a writer, blogger and podcaster, resting on his successive careers as a police officer, progressing to a junior lawyer in succession and trusts as a Fellow of the Institute of Legal Executives, a retired officer with the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve, and latterly, for three years, the owner and editor of two lifestyle magazines in Liverpool.
He also just handed over a successful two year chairmanship in Gloucestershire with Cheltenham Regency Probus.
Pandemic aside, he spends his time equally between his city, Liverpool, and the county of his birth, Gloucestershire.
In this fast-paced present age, proof-reading is essential. And this skill also occasionally leads to copy-editing writers’ manuscripts for submission to publishers and also student and post graduate dissertations.
