On a very wet and gray day, we paid a visit to a German cemetery in Glencree. Himself sang here years ago as part of a choir and since we were nearby, wanted to see it again, see if it was as picturesque and haunting as his adolescent self remembered. Without a doubt, it’s both.
Most of the graves here belong to unnamed Luftwaffe flyers who, lost or damaged, fell from the sky over Ireland. Any contact with these tragic young flyboys–English or German or Japanese or American (my grandfather was one of the lucky ones to survive the war) always makes me think of Daedalus with his wax and feathers and doomed son. Which today segued into Stephen Dedalus and Joyce and came back to this sad group of young men buried in Irish ground.
My lovely teenage son, who is studying German at school, helped translate some of the words like “zwei” (two) and “unbekannter” (unknown). My word? “Never”. Never Icarus. Absolutely never a soldier. Not my child. No matter how pretty the memorial might be.
