Choo Choo

My wife and I were listening to the commemoration service of the Somme on TV. Our then eighteen-month-old Grandson was playing with his cars which have magnets that allow a train of cars to be made. He carefully linked them, then sat back. I expected him to register satisfaction upon his baby face. Instead, he was pensive, wistful. He then uttered “Choo Choo”

This wasn’t the merry cheerful choo choo of one of his favourite TV trains, where he would wait excitedly and try to guess at the shape needed to repair the track, knowing the cartoon fix would eventually be provided by a willing passenger.

No this was slow, low & mournful. More of a “chooo chooo”’ with the oooh’s drifting dauntingly into a sorrowful silence.

I felt sad and two images hit me one after another.

The first; had he an empathy for those wonderous mechanical horses that brought our industrial revolution. Was he feeling the hiss and scent of oily steam as the journey was completed & the steam spent to cool down? Was he regretting the rusting of those beasts of burden that opened the countries & continents up to faster times & spread man further than the horses & oxen? Was his regret for their coming & creating mechanical technical man, whose motions & machines have led to a vegetating society?

The second; was he mourning a long lost loves’ parting on a journey from a smoggy smoky station platform? Tear soaked eyes following as the iron engine steamed up and shunted slowly away a hope of ever being together.

The third; was he regretting those pals who the beasts in power had shunted into hell to settle political goals in which they were sacrificial pawns. Their passion spent in the embraces of a cruel death before they had an opportunity to become men.

Could it have been the souls of those poor loving family folk herded into cattle trucks before all humanity was destroyed by a power entrusted to a maniac whose nation had said nothing rather than show positively and thoroughly their disquiet?

Yes that “chooo chooo” touched my inner being. Yet in a moment his soulful mood was gone; a light smile and skip like the flashing of star a million light years passed with love upon its brightest beam. He turned and climbed upon his Grandma’s knee wanting a story and not our boring TV.