Religion and Ethics Forum
General Category => General Discussion => Topic started by: L.A. on June 01, 2016, 06:17:30 PM
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The other night I was with some old friends in a pub and we got to reminiscing about the pubs we used to frequent as teenagers - and we realised that this was 50 years ago! At the same time the silent TV on the pub wall was showing a feature on the centenary of the Battle of Jutland - an event that had always seemed like ancient history to us.
I suddenly felt very old :(
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No.
If you'd been at Jutland, then you would be old.
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These things always make me feel weird.
The lapsed time between Blackadder and now is much longer than the lapsed time between Monty Python and Blackadder.
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My nan lived with us and looked after me while my mother worked. In the holidays she'd sit in her chair for a smoke and I'd sit on the floor, and she'd tell me of her experiences in the East End in WW11, and those of her brothers and father (all naval men).
The most sobering story she told me was of when they were hop picking and her little brother (much younger and the only one who didn't go to war) got separated and left in the fields. A German war plane spotted him and flew low, the gunner was firing at him and Pat ran for a shed of some kind and threw himself on the floor of it. My nan said the bullet holes ran the length of the building. He wasn't even ten at the time.
She died twenty five years ago now; all her brothers have died too, as has her sister. I grew up with the war a living memory, first hand stories from those who had been fished out of the sea when their boat sank, who pulled bodies out of rubble and who watched the little boats leave for Dunkirk. My nan was twenty-two when the war ended; she'd be ninety-three now. And this is what sobers me - soon WW2 won't be a living memory at all.
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It's the way it is, Rhi. The USA made much of its last living civil war soldier (died some time in the 1950s, IIRC); Harry Patch died a few years ago; and in not too many more years there will be a very old, very last WWII combatant - you'd have to be 89 now by my reckoning to have just seen active service - and not too long after that, the last person to have a direct personal memory of the war.
Such is history :-\
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Of course it is. But I grew up with the immediacy of it. It had ended only 25 years before I was born, give or take. The people I knew who'd seen service of one kind or another were in their fifties when I heard their stories.
It is what it is. But it brings me up short to think of it. I make s point of repeating the stories I heard to my kids so that they don't get lost for good. But I guess one day the stories won't be told, they'll be in an on-line archive somewhere that only historians look at.
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But I grew up with the immediacy of it. It had ended only 25 years before I was born, give or take. The people I knew who'd seen service of one kind or another were in their fifties when I heard their stories.
You lucky beast you! I was born the year after it ended and can (just) remember my father coming home from yhe pub one night, I was about five at the time, havinbg been given a good solid beating. Apparently he had been sounding off about how the people of the East End (where we lived then) should shut up aboout how they suffered and try to remember the fughting men. My father was a non-combatant, a medic, and one of the blokes in the pib had given him a right seeing-to him being the onky survivor of three generations after a bomb hit his home in Stepney.
This is one of the reasons that I still go to the Cenotaph each year - to remember and respect the civiians as much as the servicemen and women.
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I was surprised to find from my maternal aunt before she dies that my maternal grandfather had been married twice and was a bit older than my grandmother, who was his second wife. I knew he had survived active service in WW1 and that he died in 1945 (7 years before I was born), when he was only 63.
This means he was born in 1882, which is before Jack the Ripper was doing his thing and that he was teenager when Victoria died - it is a tenuous connection obviously, and it feels odd to think that relative just two generations removed from me was a genuine 'Victorian'.
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My oldest uncle was born in 1914, his father, my grandfather was born in 1879. My grandmother on the other side was born in 1907.
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My paternal grandfather was born in 1878, whilst his father was born in 1837. Whilst the infamous (?) Thomas Bowdler under whose name his sister's (Harriet) expurgated version of Shakespeare was published is not a direct ancestor of mine, our extended family tree puts him and Harriet only 2 generations before that - mid-1700s. So, given that I was born in 1956, that's 6 generations in 200 years!
One quickly realises that time can fly very fast though I'm sure it didn't feel that way during times of war and economic hardship.
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The most sobering story she told me was of when they were hop picking and her little brother (much younger and the only one who didn't go to war) got separated and left in the fields. A German war plane spotted him and flew low, the gunner was firing at him and Pat ran for a shed of some kind and threw himself on the floor of it. My nan said the bullet holes ran the length of the building. He wasn't even ten at the time.
A similar thing happened to me. I was about six or seven on my way with a neighbour's family to a cinema. I was dawdling behind the others when a Messersmit opened fire on us. Sparks flew off the flint wall just behind my legs. I must have run the next hundred yards in world record time.
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A similar thing happened to me. I was about six or seven on my way with a neighbour's family to a cinema. I was dawdling behind the others when a Messersmit opened fire on us. Sparks flew off the flint wall just behind my legs. I must have run the next hundred yards in world record time.
That's horrific. It's this kind of thing that's so important to pass on. Ordinary Europeans trying to gun down children.
When my nan told me about what happened to her brother I suggested that the pilot or gunner didn't know Pat was a child.
'Don't be stupid,' was her reply.
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My childhood home had 13 Germans living in it during WW2. When I was born in 1950 the house, and the rest of the property, still bore the signs of their occupation, and did so until the 60s. I have mentioned before how I got the thrashing of my life when I was ten, for finding in the attic (which I was forbidden to enter) a live grenade, and kicking it around like a football!
My home island was quite old fashioned, it didn't seem to join the 20th Century until the 60s. My elementary school (4-14) hadn't changed since the 1890s, the desks were of the era, and so was my first reading book. The discipline was brutal to say the least, the head teacher, who had been a teacher at the school before WW1 when my grandfather was a senior pupil, was sadistic and could have killed a boy he beat unconscious! He got away with it probably because the boy was from a family who were denigrated by most islanders! :(
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Both of my parents were born in the century before last, 1898- 1899, makes me feel ancient, mind you it must be worse for those that loose their looks too.
ippy
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Both of my parents were born in the century before last, 1898- 1899, makes me feel ancient, mind you it must be worse for those that loose their looks too.
ippy
Bugger losing your looks! Losing your locks is far far worse!
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Bugger losing your looks! Losing your locks is far far worse!
You speak for yourself Owl.
ippy
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That's horrific. It's this kind of thing that's so important to pass on. Ordinary Europeans trying to gun down children.
When my nan told me about what happened to her brother I suggested that the pilot or gunner didn't know Pat was a child.
'Don't be stupid,' was her reply.
Warfare is pretty indiscriminate. Shortly before that incident we were bombed out of our house and only survived by being in an Anderson shelter dug-out in the back yard. Part of the strategy is to break the morale of the people and the 'people' are often dehumanised by referring to them in terms like 'target', 'subhuman', infidel, collateral damage, the enemy, etc.
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You speak for yourself Owl.
ippy
I am. oh believe me, I am!
Whoever invents/finds a 100.00% effective baldness cure and a 100.00% effective baldness preventative is going to be the richest person in the world BAR NONE!
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Warfare is pretty indiscriminate. Shortly before that incident we were bombed out of our house and only survived by being in an Anderson shelter dug-out in the back yard. Part of the strategy is to break the morale of the people and the 'people' are often dehumanised by referring to them in terms like 'target', 'subhuman', infidel, collateral damage, the enemy, etc.
Yes, ekim. Of course the combatants themselves are dehumanised - what can be more dehumanising than becoming a killing machine that will target children?
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Inventing or manufacturing one, possibly :(
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Inventing or manufacturing one, possibly :(
Possibly, although there's a removal from the process of actually killing there, it's almost an intellectual exercise. It's one thing to invent killing machines in a workshop or laboratory, quite another to fire at a child in the sight of your rifle.
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My dad met Van Gogh in a pub but when my dad asked him if he wanted a drink Van Gogh said "no thanks I've got one ear".
ippy
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I am. oh believe me, I am!
Whoever invents/finds a 100.00% effective baldness cure and a 100.00% effective baldness preventative is going to be the richest person in the world BAR NONE!
Try St Kathrines House London you might find you have some missing heirs there.
Ippy
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Try St Kathrines House London you might find you have some missing heirs there.
Ippy
GROAN!!!