Of note this week is David Cameron's plans to celebrate (sorry, commemorate) the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War in 2014.
Now I am an oldish but by no means geriatric guy. In fact I was born in the year 1960. This makes me fifty three this year. When I was a small child I first came up against the consequences of the First World War. I was taken on a family visit to some distant relatives who lived in Laurencekirk, I would have been about four, certainly no more than five. So, 1964 or 1965.
These relatives were an elderly brother and sister who shared a household. The sister had looked after the brother since he was invalided out of the the army in the First World War after being caught in a poison gas attack.
Let's say 1916 or 1917. This guy had basically been a bedridden invalid (as the phrase used to be) for more than forty five years. That thought still has the power to shock me now. Roughly the same interval of time again has passed since the time I met him. That makes another way of putting it into context.
For David Cameron it may be some strange divorced notion of celebrating the sacrifice of thousands. In fact for many people my age, we can relate to the suffering of that awful folly at first hand.
The First World War was the first industrial scale war. The first total war if you will. Two Great Uncles of mine came home to Brechin after the war to find that their mother refused them admission to the house. She made them strip all their (literally) lousy clothes on the wash house of the tenement and burn them in the boiler fire. Only after a good wash were they allowed into the house.
It wasn't just the First World War that came home to the people of this part of the world. In the Second World War a lot of the local farm workers had been dragooned onto the Territorial Army by one of the local landowners. I might as well name him. Robertson of Balmakewan. He made it pretty well a condition of employment that his workers joined the Territorial Army. The Black Watch and Gordons Territorials (the local units) were part of the Highland Brigade.
They were all called up on the declaration of war in 1939. Robertson of Balmakewan of course was a Farmer and in a "reserved occupation". No warfare for him. The majority of the Highland Brigade surrendered at St Valery in 1940. No Dunkirk evacuation for them. They were left to surrender and captivity as prisoners of war.
Two of my relatives were captured at St Valery and spent the rest of the war in captivity. They had to endure a forced march into Germany where they were exhibited en masse to the civilian population. They remembered the civilians as being not in the least excited at the sight of them, despite the attempts of the guards to whip up hysteria.
As "other ranks" they had to work. Only Officers weren't required by the Geneva Convention not to work. This gave the Officers plenty of time to be thinking about escape plans.
The "other ranks" were required to work in order to defray the cost of their maintenance to their captors. All perfectly allowable under the Convention. My relatives spent their war years working on farms in what was then Germany but is now part of Poland.
They were generally well treated, ate with the family of the farmers in most instances (unless the police were around) and by and large felt that the experience of working on farms in Silesia was generally pretty comparable to working on farms in Scotland. The (no) pay was only marginally worse than Scotland.
They were repatriated in 1945 after victory in Europe and being liberated by the Red Army.
I have been lucky in my time. Born at exactly the right time in the Twentieth Century (that most bloody of centuries) to avoid any compulsory soldiering for the British State. I was also fortunate enough to resist the economic conscription which has brought so many young men and women to an early grave or to multiple disabilities.
Casualties in Afghanistan are surviving now who even ten years ago would have died on the battlefield. People are surviving multiple amputations and other hideous disabling and disfiguring injuries. They come home to what? A land fit for heroes? The old lie.
How many will be lingering for the next forty five years? And who will look after them?
Now I am an oldish but by no means geriatric guy. In fact I was born in the year 1960. This makes me fifty three this year. When I was a small child I first came up against the consequences of the First World War. I was taken on a family visit to some distant relatives who lived in Laurencekirk, I would have been about four, certainly no more than five. So, 1964 or 1965.
These relatives were an elderly brother and sister who shared a household. The sister had looked after the brother since he was invalided out of the the army in the First World War after being caught in a poison gas attack.
Let's say 1916 or 1917. This guy had basically been a bedridden invalid (as the phrase used to be) for more than forty five years. That thought still has the power to shock me now. Roughly the same interval of time again has passed since the time I met him. That makes another way of putting it into context.
For David Cameron it may be some strange divorced notion of celebrating the sacrifice of thousands. In fact for many people my age, we can relate to the suffering of that awful folly at first hand.
The First World War was the first industrial scale war. The first total war if you will. Two Great Uncles of mine came home to Brechin after the war to find that their mother refused them admission to the house. She made them strip all their (literally) lousy clothes on the wash house of the tenement and burn them in the boiler fire. Only after a good wash were they allowed into the house.
It wasn't just the First World War that came home to the people of this part of the world. In the Second World War a lot of the local farm workers had been dragooned onto the Territorial Army by one of the local landowners. I might as well name him. Robertson of Balmakewan. He made it pretty well a condition of employment that his workers joined the Territorial Army. The Black Watch and Gordons Territorials (the local units) were part of the Highland Brigade.
They were all called up on the declaration of war in 1939. Robertson of Balmakewan of course was a Farmer and in a "reserved occupation". No warfare for him. The majority of the Highland Brigade surrendered at St Valery in 1940. No Dunkirk evacuation for them. They were left to surrender and captivity as prisoners of war.
Two of my relatives were captured at St Valery and spent the rest of the war in captivity. They had to endure a forced march into Germany where they were exhibited en masse to the civilian population. They remembered the civilians as being not in the least excited at the sight of them, despite the attempts of the guards to whip up hysteria.
As "other ranks" they had to work. Only Officers weren't required by the Geneva Convention not to work. This gave the Officers plenty of time to be thinking about escape plans.
The "other ranks" were required to work in order to defray the cost of their maintenance to their captors. All perfectly allowable under the Convention. My relatives spent their war years working on farms in what was then Germany but is now part of Poland.
They were generally well treated, ate with the family of the farmers in most instances (unless the police were around) and by and large felt that the experience of working on farms in Silesia was generally pretty comparable to working on farms in Scotland. The (no) pay was only marginally worse than Scotland.
They were repatriated in 1945 after victory in Europe and being liberated by the Red Army.
I have been lucky in my time. Born at exactly the right time in the Twentieth Century (that most bloody of centuries) to avoid any compulsory soldiering for the British State. I was also fortunate enough to resist the economic conscription which has brought so many young men and women to an early grave or to multiple disabilities.
Casualties in Afghanistan are surviving now who even ten years ago would have died on the battlefield. People are surviving multiple amputations and other hideous disabling and disfiguring injuries. They come home to what? A land fit for heroes? The old lie.
How many will be lingering for the next forty five years? And who will look after them?
Sunset Song has haunting scenes of the First World War. Ewan Tavendale's description of why he deserted, which of course he was shot for, are heartbreaking. Brutality, savagery; are there enough words to depict war?
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