MR W Armstrong, of the Royal British Legion (Letters, May 26), decries the actions of those who desecrated the war memorial in Bold Venture Park Darwen.

Perhaps this behaviour and that in London the other weekend is because the war is so far away to youngsters and they have no perception of the true horror endured by those fighting it and the stress for those who stayed behind.

The following poem, written by my husband when he was 21 and fighting in the Middle East, might give some idea of just what it was like during the escape from Dunkirk exactly 60 years ago this week.

My husband and his friend were only 20 when the events in the poem took place.

Although my husband, who died some seven years ago, told me of his escape from the beaches in Northern France, he never told me of this incident, probably because it was too painful.

To my friend, Bobbie Beaumont, killed in France -- June 1, 1940

The sound of the "Last Post" sinks to sad silence

Sighing "Lights out, 'tis the end of this day,"

Hundreds of times we have heard it together

But now you are gone: whisper "Where do you lay?"

"I lie where you laid me, south-west of Auchy

"Where I died in your arms in a ditch by the rye,

"Strafed by a Messerschmitt vicious by spitting

"Venom and death from a bright sunny sky.

"I'm happy to lie in the land of my forebears

"Except when the winds wing over from England

"And sing in the poplars high over my head.

"Then would I were 'neath the beeches of Rutland

"Till the sound of 'Reveille' wakens the dead."

(Howard Dempster Short -- written Armistice Day, 1941)

ANN SHORT (Mrs), Snowdon Avenue, Blackburn.