mum and dad

my mum's birthday today, 84 years old, here's a photo from way-back-in-the-day of my mum and dad, my old man, recently de-mobbed from the services after WW2, he came out an Army boxing champion, proper hard bastard, saw action in europe and the far east, he moved a lorry to clear the beach-head in normandy after the driver got killed only to be blown clean through the roof of the truck and sustaining serious burns to his body after sustaining a direct hit from enemy fire, i can remember him picking pieces of shrapnel out of his body with a needle when i was a kid, he never grew body-hair on the left of his body afterwards, [strange but true, neither do i, what the fuck?] sent back to dear old blighty to recover and eight week's later he was on a boat to japan, my old man was born into poverty, he wore his sisters sandals to school and the kid's used to stick their fingers into the holes in his short's, his dad, my grand-dad, was an ex-derby county player who suffered a really badly broken leg which they didn't re-set properly and he ended up crippled from an early age, my dad and his sisters looked after the old boy, i can remember my dad telling me his army days were the best days of his life, three squares a day, friendship and serving your country, my dad was never a 'cuddly' bloke, just an old school, proper dad, hard working and someone a kid could look up to, he alway's played down his role in the war but for me the german 'gott mit uns' belt buckle he swapped a german P.O.W for a cigarette who surrended to my dad after a ferocious battle summed him up,  hard but fair, Mavis Bailey, my mum, happy birthday, love you,  Ernest Edward Bailey, my dad, love you too.........