Letters from my Aunt #6

Sixteen years before I'm posted to Deutschland          
another operator on a morse key,        
transcribed a message with his guitar playing hands        
and that was sent to Ike then, on to history...       
Johnny Cash on Stalin's death set some folk free        
and meant the simmering cold war stayed, just cold        
and evesdropping became that key        
but, I guess that story's been done, and told?        
         
That was our dream to get the world spanned          
by some huge news back in nineteen sixty-nine and we,        
a tiny part of BAOR, in Hemer near Dortmund,        
squashed our ears with 'phones and kept eyes peeled          
for SOXMIS plates when down town and note where and when seen        
excited to be spies, we giggling few searched for gold,        
among the constant scream of Morse's high speed stream        
and yearned for something that we, too, could get told...        
         
Hemer, nineteen sixty-nine in a corner of some army camp        
watching, can you believe, in colour, on satellite TV        
all American made, a stage set in arable land,        
the hugest music fest the world had ever seen,        
a million folk at Woodstock and we screamed and screamed,        
to be a distant part of this and over the phone got your Ma told        
to look at the news tomorrow to see this ' happening ' as I see        
it happening now, in my mind, becoming old...