It’s a long way from Piney Chapel to Switzerland, where Paul “Darrell” McGuire teaches school, but he bridged the miles with a poem remembering his grandfather, Robert McGuire Sr., a World War I veteran.

McGuire, who is in his third year of teaching history in a Swiss public school, is the third of four children of Christine and Bobby McGuire of the Piney Chapel community.

Recently, McGuire looked up the unit in which his grandfather served during WWI, the 30th Army Division, and visited the battlefields in France where he fought.

“Casualties in the 30th Division were much lower than other divisions because they went into battle alongside British armored tank divisions,” wrote McGuire in an e-mail from Switzerland. “It was quite a moving experience for me to walk in the footsteps of Grandpa and to gain a little better perspective on the things we know little of, things and events that surely impacted his mind and to some extent defined the man he became.”

The elder McGuire returned to North Alabama after WWI, where he became a farmer, married Sara Melissa Adams and sired 11 children. He died at the age of 84 and is buried in New Salem Cemetery.

While his grandson Darrell had written a little poetry in the past, he was so moved by his visit to the site of the Battle of Somme that he expressed his feelings for the men who died there in a poem.

“I felt strongly compelled to try to explain what could only have been horrific to our grandfather,” he said. “I wrote to convey the images and feelings so that the rest of us, his children and grandchildren who may never get to see where he fought and sacrificed, might get to know him and his circumstances better.”

McGuire submitted his poem to DAV Magazine. This is his poem:



Uncovering a Man



In memory of Robert McGuire, a soldier in the American Expeditionary Force who served in France in 1918 during the Great War.



The battlefields are covered now,

beneath the endless fields of grain,

buried by years and the farmer’s plow

their truest purpose now reclaimed.



The machinegun’s rattle, the cannon’s roar,

their call to death was headed well,

are silent now and scream no more

replaced by a church’s tolling bell.



The tools designed for bloody deeds,

the hands of time have put away,

no purpose left to fill their needs

lie hidden now and in decay.



The blood and tears, they linger here,

in the ground beneath my feet,

giving life to wild spring flowers

between the rows of wheat.



The marching chants, the songs, the words

disguising ever haunting fears,

dwell within the gentle breeze

that whispers softly in my ears.



The footsteps of the weary soldier,

echo still across the land,

a heavy world upon his shoulders

and keys to freedom in his hands.



The selfless deeds of great expense,

far too countless to comprehend,

enshrined as white stone monuments

the secrets of a dying man.



The lives of men so full of promise,

the daily loss they must have known,

their names engraed on marble crosses

‘tis France they’ll call forever home.



The stains of war upon a mind,

that ruthless battled did bestow,

lie ever present to remind

of things no man should ever know.



The loss of youth and innocence,

the price of tempting fate perchance,

instead of death, the consequence

of the warrior’s lethal dance.



The boy who came to see the world,

lives on here in some strange sense,

became the man returning home

to taste of future’s sweet suspense.



Ideas like bravery, courage and glory,

we only faintly understand,

are the words that tell the story

of a solider, a Doughboy, a man.



Paul Darrell McGuire

April 12, 2007