Midsummer War

We have recently passed the longest day of the year (June 20), but another day this year also commemorates a different kind of "the longest day", as the title of the film about D-Day, 80 years ago. By midsummer that year, the Normandy beaches were taken but there was fierce fighting to take and liberate Cherbourg by the Americans. This poem combines both stories, and also a myth that mid-summer, young women would gather rose petals as a means of seeking love. The saying goes as follows:

Rose leaves, rose leaves, rose leaves I strew;
He that will love me, come after me now.

Alas, in 1944, many flowers would end on gravestones.

Midsummer War

The longest day, and yet also the name
Given to war time memory’s early claim,
When in June the landing craft arrived,
And German soldiers were surprised;
Stormy weather made invasion poor:
But break in the weather opened door,
And the landings came, freedom began:
Liberty to captives said the newsman
By mid-June Cherbourg was the prize,
The battleground where the cries,
Of the wounded, the dying, heard;
Nature fell silent, no song of bird,
As fighting began upon the street,
As German and Americans meet;
And fierce fighting goes on all day:
This also the longest day, they say,
Midsummer and sun shines bright:
Good against evil: endless fight;
While the sun shines long above,
Myths tell of rose petals of love,
Reflecting saying I love you:
Midsummer legends sad and true;
Soldier’s sweethearts left behind,
Remember legends so enshrined:
Where have all the flowers gone,
Gone to soldiers who passed on:
All to graveyards, everyone one,
Under shining Midsummer sun.