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Broken Bones

John Paul Kirkham

Thursday, September 2nd, 2021

1 Leave a comment on verse 1 0 How many people can claim that
breaking their leg
saved their life
twice

2 Leave a comment on verse 2 0 Seconds from signing for those Red Devils
shattered bones stunned the cheering crowds
on that Saturday afternoon
put paid to those Korean battlefields

3 Leave a comment on verse 3 0 Well convalesced and working for the GPO
manning the top floor midnight Dial Tower shift
he took the call from the cold
and broke the news first of more broken bones
and death
in Munich

Notes

All true again. My dad in the late 1940s and early 1950s played for Radcliffe somewhere in those Lancashire Leagues. He was the top scorer as a teenager, season after season and just as he was about to sign for Man Utd he broke his leg so badly that was his footy career was over in a flash and also his possible selection for National Service.
The strange synchronicity was that he worked for the GPO and was on the late shift that took the first incoming news at the Dial Tower, Manchester of the Munich Air Crash.

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Source: http://footballpoets.org/poems/broken-bones/