Remembering on Remembrance Day
It is Remembrance Day, and I am remembering. I’m not old enough to have lived through the Second World War, but I am old enough to remember those who did. My parents, for example – perhaps yours too.
I remember the adult conversations, memories woven into our growing up by the older generation who passed through our world with their stories. The First World War was remembered too, but the second was fresher then, and known as “the war”. “I’ll never forget in the war the day I heard our Joe had joined up.” “Remember the rationing?” “Oh yes indeed I do! The look on my mother’s face one day when she got to the front of the queue and no meat!”
Somehow the stories were all told by those who stayed behind. I don’t remember hearing any tales from men who had fought and returned. Perhaps we didn’t know any. Perhaps it was just too painful to talk about. Better forgotten?
But we did know about the pain, if we listened. My mother would talk of her cousin who was killed in the war. She never mentioned him without saying how very, very fond she had been of him, how upset she was when they heard the news of his death. The pain was still there, even after twenty years. Even after thirty, and forty years.
Growing up, we didn’t know much about him, this “cousin who died in the war”. But he was always there, in my mother’s descriptions of his colourful family, laughing, loving, joking and drinking together in one small townhouse in County Down. It was later that I thought about him most, when my mother was no longer there to ask. When there were only boxes. Boxes of old letters and photographs waiting to speak to us some day when we were ready to listen.
And one day we were. The early letters seemed cheerful, though a long way from home.
“…as regards myself I really cannot complain; apart from the heat, fleas, flies, desert rats and snakes this war is a pleasure.”
He wrote of how he would love to see his wife,
“…but I suppose everyone must play ones part in this war.”
“Don’t forget to remember me to all my dear old friends. Tell them that I do not expect to be home before this war finishes but I know that I have their prayers & good wishes and that means everything to me. […] To me they are people worth fighting for.”
“…I don’t think the day is far distant when we shall all “Let freedom Ring”.
But it was only 1941. Just before Christmas 1942 he received a cable that his baby was dangerously ill. “I almost went out of my mind,” he wrote, “not knowing what to do for the best.” He cabled back asking to be kept informed, but two months later had heard nothing. “Can you imagine it […] receiving a cable before Xmas then silence.” I don’t know when or if he ever got leave but I do know that the baby died. More bad news came in 1944 when his father became ill and subsequently died. Like so many soldiers fighting abroad for years on end, the physical ordeals of war were only part of the story. Feelings of homesickness and missing families would have been ongoing, but being cut off from your family in times of crisis surely must have been the worst of all. Paralysed, unable to help or support anyone.
“Things are mighty tough out here but nothing worries me as much as Dad. If ever the worst should happen it will be a harder blow than I ever hope to receive in Battle.”
There were the letters of worry, the hopes raised and dashed, the assurances to friends and family that he was all right and not to worry about him, letters written before the regiment was to move out – destination unknown.
And then there was the letter from his brother. It was addressed to my grandmother, who was very close to the family. He had been killed in action just a day before his wife gave birth to a little girl.
The last letter my grandmother had had from him was written just before that last battle, and ended with the words:
“No matter where I may go I shall always remember you all,
God Bless & spare you
All my Love.
Your Loving Cousin
B*”
It is easy to understand now why we were brought up never to forget. To remember and respect the people who fought and those who died, as well as the ones at home who lived through that time. “Lest we forget.” Maybe they talked about it and maybe they didn’t. But no-one forgot.
The Blethering Ant 