in a country churchyard

A gentle breeze ruffled through the chestnut trees.
Mourners in little groups conversed here and there amid the headstones.
I stood for a moment alone.
Suddenly my spider senses tingled.
Turning I beheld a large handlebar moustache moving in my direction at a rate of knots from across the pasture.
It was Colonel Des Trunners Retired.
Ridiculous last name that.
Retired.
Not as ridiculous as the tache though.
My mind raced.
Didn't I diss him on the Heelers Diaries a few years ago?
Good Lord.
What had I written?
Something about him going to Lebanon at the behest of Amnesty International and the Chief of Staff of the Irish Defence Forces, to stage what I'd called a trumped up investigation into what I'd thought was a thoroughly righteous Israeli vengeance mission against the Iranian backed proxy terror army Hezbollah, the Israeli action having in my view unquestionably justifiably arisen after the Hezbollah had launched an absolutely illegal absolutely criminal absolutely vicious sneak attack on Israel and then been pursued by the Israelis back into their Lebanese bold holes with venom, fire and the sword.
Something like that.
I think I'd suggested that Colonel Retired had gone there on behalf of his Amnesty International and Irish Army quisling appeaserish Islamist sympathising paymasters solely with the purpose of accusing Israel of war crimes and without any real interest in the truth of the situation, and without any real capacity to assess such a truth should it perchance come up behind him and bite him on the arse.
I had noted that in transitting to South Lebanon, Colonel Retired had been squired through the region and facilitating in reaching his destination by the Assad family dictatorship in Syria.
That is to say he'd passed without comment or concern through Bashar Assad's Syria, the fourth most foul police State on the planet. (After Iran, the Chinese and the Russians.)
And he'd passed through this murderocracy, this utterly enslaved Syria, without for a moment appearing to notice anything wrong.
He certainly hadn't noticed anything you might call a human rights violation on a dark night.
Yeah.
He'd found plenty of what he chose to call Israeli human rights violations just up the road in Lebanon.
And as per my usual form, I'd roundly jeered him for it on my gentle progressive little left wing blog.
Back to the present.
As Colonel Trunners approached me at my father's funeral I wondered briefly with no little trepidation if he might not have taken umbrage at any of my previous remarks.
They say his tache quivers when he discovers a war crime.
It was quivering now.
He shook my hand.
"I'm sorry for your trouble," he said.
This is a traditional Irish expression of sympathy at funerals.
I thanked him sincerely.
He turned to go.
Before he left, it occurred to me to mention the present Syrian government slaughter of thousands of Syrian citizens, the maiming and torturing of thousands more, and the imprisonment without trial of tens of thousands.
I was on the pop of suggesting he return to Syria on behalf of Amnesty International and the Chief of Staff of the Irish Defence Forces,  in order to find out what real war crimes look like.
But I let it go.
It was neither the time nor the place.