Monday, June 02, 2014

Amanuensis Monday - Grandma Hill's Poetry, Week 39

Just in time for D-day - a brief history of World War II...

World War

A few years ago three mad beasts broke loose on this earth:
Hiro, Adolph and Mussolini.
They thought to make civilization fit for no one,
But a shameless libertine.
The first to break loose was the brave Mussolini
And he fell with full force on little Ethiopia,
With his bare legs dangling, and no protection,
Only his umbrella.
He was the picture of a pitiful, helpless, half-cast little filla.
But Mussolini, from his balcony, showed his knighthood,
Soon had the country secure, to house his own brood.

Then Adolph thought it was quite time
To bring Austria and its resources into his line;
So he bluntly said, “Curt, dear, I’m coming into your land
You may not like it, but you can’t raise a hand.”
With no trouble at all he got away with all that
And it made his little pinhead too big for his hat.

Next, he sent his shameless dupes, to win the fair
Sudaneseland, knowing England and France were unprepared,
Soon Czechoslovakia, sold down the river by
Chamberlain the same sad fate had shared.
Then grumbling of unfair treatment by the treaty of Versailles.

The vision of a passage to the sea caught his evil eye.
So poor Poland, after a very short, but brave fight,
Soon fell, the first victim to his armed might.
This only whetted his taste for destruction and rape
And he decided the Scandinavians, to woo then to take.
He sent more of his shameless dupes to betray this
Fair northern gem
And show their gratitude by biting the hand that
had fed them.
On his way to the Peninsula, little Denmark had
had to  succumb
So now, ‘twas only to find a way through Holland
and Belgium.
Then into unprepared France, with her dissension
and strife
‘Twas a very short struggle, soon she gave up her life
Then Mussolini, who’d been on the fence, saw a chance
To strike in the back, this brave fallen France.

Now they were free to turn their might, on the poor
crippled John Bull,
But soon found out that he was going to make more
than a mouthful.
And not counting on the tenacity of the Bull of the
speed of the Yank,
They decided to take six weeks off, and get rid of
the Bear that hung on their flank.

At first, it seemed the Bear had not enough strength
to check the onrush of this savage beast
And had to keep backing up, taking his sustenance
with him, as he kept backing to the North and the East.

Then Hiro, and his apelike beasts, thought it time to
get their spoon in the gravy
So, on a calm Sunday morning, they made a sneak
attack on our then one ocean Navy.
This roused Uncle Sam to action, and he decided to
collect and throw in his great might
With the other loyal nations, who were fighting so
bravely for freedom, decency and right.
Thinking they were rid of our fleet, they began their
pillage and rape of our Island outpost,
And almost succeeded in reaching the fair cities that
lie on our West Coast.

But they soon found that our Uncle Sam was not so
dumb or so slow
And that when he got started, he really knew where
he wanted to go.
But meantime, the goose-stepping Adolph, was not
doing so well,
He soon found the Bear’s winter not nearly so warm
as that place they call Hell.
The Bear’s army was killing off his men by the
hundreds of dozens
And winter’s cold breath, left more thousands lying in
the snow stiffly frozen.
The Bear, now thoroughly maddened by their terrible
crimes, carnage and loot
With Uncle Sam’s aid, is giving Adolph’s rear, the iron
toe of his heavy boot.

And as troubles never come singly, the Beast soon found
with alarm
That the Bull had rallied and could now do him
real harm.
For the first time in his career, he was confronted with
an army in front and rear,
And his raving made the Balkan states cower and
tremble with fear.
They knew their civilization lay in his path,
And nothing would check his maniacal wrath.

So all they could do, was to bow down and be crushed
beneath his heel.
Be trampled, raped and looted ‘till they ceased to feel.

His fox he had sent to the desert was wily and smart,
And really worried the crippled Bull at the start
But when the Bull did break loose, with Uncle Sam’s aid
he sure went, Hell-bent,
And chased the now frightened fox clear across the
African continent.
There met by our own brave lads, modernly equipped
for the fray
The thoroughly beaten fox soon found that on that side of
 the sea, he had no place to stay.
So he kept backing up, and with no way to take his loot
He landed, much cripple, right on the toe of Italy’s boot.

But all the time, where was Uncle Sam?  Had he deserted
Winnie, Joe and Kai-shek?
Not so, he was busy forging weapons to help start the
savage beasts on their backward trek.
He had trained and equipped our brave boys, and sent
them everywhere to fight for the right
And show dictators, that the time had come, when they no
longer could rule by their might.
He had built huge boats to go on and under the seas, and
thousands of planes to fly in the air
Had bridged all oceans, with ugly ducks to keep troops
and weapons on their way over there.
At last, he’s sent a force that was second to none, and to
the great Ike they gave the job
To go into France, and stop for all time, the lootings and
murders of this bloodthirsty mob.
Having failed to get oil from the East, this Adolph with
the brain of a beast and the voice of a Jack mule
Found to his dismay, that for his tanks, planes and trucks,
he was running very short of fuel.

With the greatest Armada, that ever was known, moving
in ever closer from the West
The now frightened Adolph found that was a real
calamity, not a mere jest.
From North, South, East and West, Allied armies came
with a leap and a bound
Now that they had his vaunted Luftwaffe, securely pinned
fast to the ground.
Frantic, more frantic, he became, as they kept moving
ever closer in,
Until finally came his everlasting finish at his Capitol in Berlin.

With VE day over, our brave boys were being sent
quickly to the Pacific.
Where their brave brother Marines had found the
fighting quite terrific.

Mac’s army assisted by the Navy and the boys flying the planes
Had robbed the Nips of most of their plunder, and
closed their sea lanes.
They had gone from island to island, and were nearing
the Nip’s home coast,
Had destroyed the vaunted Navy of which they once were
proud to boast.
They had peppered their industrial cities,
with bombs, shot and shell
Then came the atomic bomb, and nothing more was left to tell.
So Hirohito, like Adolph, was forced to accept
the unconditional surrender,
And we hope they won’t find the terms to be too harsh,
yet not too tender.
That the big five will unite like a kind, friendly big brother,
To teach warring nations how to live at peace with the world

and each other.






Nancy Jane Wiley Hill (1875-1960) was always writing something.  Many of those poems are now in the possession of her granddaughter Shirley Kern.  Shirley, with the help of her sister-in-law Ruth Ormsby, transcribed these poems in 1996 for a Hill-Ormsby-Kern family reunion.  I am going to post many of these poems so that they may be enjoyed by all.

These are copyright 1996 and reprinted with permission.

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