Ukraine Dispatch 38 | And the People Did Suffer Greatly
Ukraine Dispatches
Volume 1 2022
“... a lone yacht slipped off the northern French beaches on 4 June and carried the last handful of Dunkirk evacuees home.”
And Darkness
of pitch-black night,
moonless,
did descend upon the Land.
Freedom and Safety
were vanquished.
Subjugation revelled
in the long flowing coat
of Liberation,
And the Peoples of Europe
and across the World
did suffer greatly.
© Kenneth Thomas Webb 2022-2023
That was in 1940.
What played out before the world’s eyes in 1940, is right now, playing out again in full sight of the world. The People of Ukraine now stand holding the breach of Freedom’s Defences.
Let us not abandon them simply because we have our own internal problems. Simply because they seem to be so far away. Simply because we do not even know where their country is.
In the Kremlin this week, holding a glass of champagne at a military awards ceremony, a man called Putin shrugged his shoulders at the gathered cameras, waved his glass and muttered quite clearly the words “a neighbouring country”. This neighbouring country was not even referred to as the enemy. It was simply a neighbouring country that needed to be dealt with.
He sees no wrong in what he has done and what he continues to prosecute with full vigour.
His People see no wrong, and when he meets the mothers of Russian soldiers whose lives he has lost, they are quiescent, even in awe of him.
This is a long war. We thought such a war could never happen again. But it has. The People of Ukraine are not engaged in a little local war, they are fighting for not only their very existence but they are fighting our war too. In exactly the same way as we did in these islands in 1940. Yet the guards are asleep at their post.
It is far into the night watches. Darkness is at its most impenetrable, that darkness that causes people to drift into sleep.
I fear a time of great international terror approaches.
14 December 2022
All Rights Reserved
© Kenneth Thomas Webb 2022-2023
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.
