! ! Dick Fozard's Wartime Navy Knife

I’m not one for mementoes – Grandma in sepia, pie-crust necked and pleated blouse, expressionless amidst her dressed-up, mixed-up brood; chic aunt with that hundred-watt smile which clicked off, the instant the shutter clicked…but now I’m holding this kitchen knife. It’s got a triangular blade to allow for that quick chop-chop of the trained cook or kitchen-hand; black, dulled ebonite handle; and although it’s made in Sheffield, by Geo.Watt,1943, it’s not stainless steel but stained iron; sharp, but not too dangerous when used in the cook’s galley of a hungry ship of the unslept that’s simultaneously zigzagging to avoid torpedoes and kamikaze dive-bombers, while buffeting through the South China Seas. The ‘ broad arrow’ stamped on it – as once used to pattern convicts' clothes – here means, that it was wartime issue. Dick trained as artist and lithographer’s apprentice just in time not to hone his talents when called up to fight the Japs in that nasty, ruthless end-campaign when Europe had declared peace, but not Japan. He wouldn’t talk of it; and when a few years back someone saw and remembered him from then, he shook hands warmly, said little, left it to the other jacktar to tell the story when he’d gone. And went back to find himself again, walking the Yorkshire hills and dales with rucksack, pipe, a crust, an onion, cheese, cut I guess with this same knife, and missing nothing with his artist’s vision; beyond solitude; content; complete. He never really used his part-developed skills again except to teach, with few words but with superb craftsman’s care, leaving a trail of devoted pupils: ‘He taught me all I know’. Only those, perhaps, who know war, can know peace in this way, asking nothing; to know him (but careful not to question) was to know a little of that peace deep within the sea of himself, the sea which holds so many souls. When he moved on, as he often did, he left his knife. I use it every day, remembering this man who was just one who knew, lived, war, quietly guarding his memories of pain with love, of love with pain. I sharpen it, like a memory I do not have. Like one who prays devoutly, to that unknown god of war; who may, in ways we cannot understand, guard such souls.