A Dedication

This particular page serves as a dedication to all those that served in this - and so many other - great battles of the war. It is to those individual men, and women, who fought, were wounded, captured or died, whether it was for some great cause or for their homeland - or simply because there was no other choice.

None of this indicates any belief on my part in any of the causes they fought for, except for that of the freedom of the individual to live and die as they choose. No dedication to those politicians who caused so very many to lose their lives, nor even to those who tried to prevent it all: just those who actually did what they were sent to do - however foolish the reasons for those orders.

Wait for me, and I'll return - only wait very hard;
Wait until you are filled with sorrow as you watch the yellow rain;
Wait when the wind sweeps the snowdrifts;
Wait in the sweltering heat;
Wait when others have stopped waiting, forgetting their yesterdays;
Wait when even from afar no letters come to you;
Wait even when others are tired of waiting;
Wait even when my mother and son think I am no more;
And when friends sit around the fire drinking to my memory,
Wait, and do not hurry to drink to my memory too;
Wait, for I'll return, defying every death;
And let those who do not wait say I was lucky;
They will never understand that, in the midst of death,
You, with your waiting, saved me;
Only you and I will know how I survived -
It's because you waited as no one else did.

Konstantin Simonov, 1941