He wasn’t the only one to lie about his age to get into the army, but to do it three times was certainly stretching his luck as well as the truth. A maternal grandparent of Beverly's, surname Hendry, went off to earn a soldier’s pay in Britain’s Boer War. Later, he served in England’s expeditionary force to France in WW1. Finally, he fudged an application and was accepted as a mess cook in WW2. After surviving these three hostilities, he retired with his much younger bride to Victoria and got a job with a local bakery. The story may be exaggerated a tad when it comes to the "Dad's Cookies" bit because even a cursory check with google will show a 1920's company in the USA with that name. The rest seems accurate enough without a full military search.
Three Times A Soldier
You really figured bad luck
followed you.
Enlisted at 14 and sent
with Kitchener to fight the Boers
at Maefeking,
the century just a yearling too
though someone knew you’d lied
about your age,
but let it pass to fill the ranks.
And then you got sent
to the kitchen wagons
with hardly any chance
to fire your weapon
to bring home some
battle stories for
the folks you’d sent your
modest pay check to.
But 1914 would put
everything to rights
and damn, they needed men
as badly as the family
needed your remittance
although, once you
got a designation on your
enlistment form,
the chances are
you’ll get that duty once again,
not that some safety
from the shells obtained
by doing cookhouse work,
for sure there was enough
of death to go around
in strangling mustard gas
and bombs, and all
the ghastly weapons of a war
to end all wars.
Bad luck to serve another final stint
and have to fib about your age again,
though someone knew
and stuck you back in food support,
those few grey hairs a testament
to truth beyond the birthdate fallacies
on your 1939 enlistment form.
So discharge gave a modest pension
to a modest lifestyle
in a very modest home,
and some experience
to land yourself a job
in one small city bakery
because you knew your way
around an oven
and the mixing bowls
and even brought
a family cookie recipe to use.
But damn! The owners
sold that recipe to some
far larger enterprise, and you
were never compensated
for the thing and had to see
on grocery shelves the packages
of cookies your grandfather
had one time prepared,
and you had served
to soldiers through three wars
now labelled “Dad’s Cookies”
as if some benevolent senior,
rising early, had baked the lot
to serve the boys come
weary from the trenches
on some far-off battlefield.
“Bad luck” indeed old man
but then you knew
the powers that were
could not be questioned
and you were somewhat satisfied
you’d earned a final
spot in the military’s
cemetery on a hill
that overlooked that bakery,
town and at least one
enlistment hall.