This Was My Brother

(For Lt.-Col. Howard McTavish, killed in action at Dieppe)

This was my brother
At Dieppe,
Quietly a hero
Who gave his life
Like a gift,
Withholding nothing.

His youth … his love …
His enjoyment of being alive …
His future, like a book
With half the pages still uncut –

This was my brother
At Dieppe –
The one who built me a doll house
When I was seven,
Complete to the last small picture frame,
Nothing forgotten.

He was awfully good at fixing things,
At stepping into the breach when he was needed.

That’s what he did at Dieppe;
He was needed.
And even death must have been a little shamed
At his eagerness.

- Poem by Mona Gould, excerpted from Outside the Box: The Life and Legacy of Writer Mona Gould, the Grandmother I Thought I Knew by Maria Meindl