Lest we forget.........

And so Remembrance Day is with us again. I ask myself if the British are undergoing a sea-change in their attitudes, especially to their recent history.

The ‘two minutes silence’ was introduced after WW1. It seemed to fall into desuetude sometime after WW2 – I have no sense of when because I spent most of my young adult life abroad. But it has been back now for some time and it seems to be quite rigorously observed. I happened to glance at a soccer match on a TV in a local pub on Sunday and saw the two teams standing to attention in rows. Apparently they were observing the silence as they would play no soccer on Remembrance Day itself.

The BBC’s excellent ‘Countrywise’ programme was given over to related topics. One such was a piece about Slapton Sands where the Americans rehearsed for D-Day. Shortly before, German E-boats strayed into a full-scale amphibious exercise and in the ensuing mayhem more American were killed than on D-Day at Omaha Beach.  There is an immaculately preserved Sherman tank on the beach-front as a memorial.

It also covered Lavenham Airfield in Suffolk, an area that I know well. It was a US air-base during WW2. The farmer who owns the lands has perfectly restored the old control tower which now stands as his personal tribute to the 26,000 US airmen who lost their lives in the bombing campaign over Germany in addition to the 55,000 RAF men who died. And in the bar of the Swan Hotel in Lavenham there is a preserved wall that carries the signatures of the aircrews who patronised it, such as General Andrews who was killed in action and who is commemorated with Andrewsfield which is now a flying club from which I have flown quite few times. The wall is almost a history of WW2, with the early signatures being English, then Polish and  Czech, until the arrival of the Americans in late 1942.

Finally, it went to the National Arboretum Memorial. This is absolutely stunning, and commemorates the British servicemen and women who have died in the 43 conflicts - yes, 43 – since WW2 in which we have been engaged, 16,000 names in all and rising every week. To devote so much industry and talent in creating this masterpiece can only indicate a very acute sense of history and of respect for the dead.

Where I live, there is a memorial in a small parish  church to American airmen who were all killed during WW2 when their aircraft crashed into a nearby mountain when taking  them back to the US on completion of their tours. There are fresh flowers on it the whole time. Goodness knows who puts them there. Every year the Stars and Stripes is raised on the mountain top to commemorate the anniversary of the tragedy. There is also a service there, which this year was attended by members of the space shuttle crews.

There is a War Graves Commission cemetery in another tiny parish church adjoining a war-time airfield, marking the graves of the airmen who were killed flying from there. Some were in their 50’s and still on active service!

When I think that WW2 is as remote in time for a 20-year old today as the Battle of Omdurman was for me at 20, I find it astonishing that there is so much respect shown by the younger generation. Perhaps it is because it is men and women from their generation who are dying in our present useless wars.

We British are a funny old lot. Maybe it’s our mongrel blood that makes us totally unpredictable. When I was a kid during WW2, our quiet country village was invaded by Italian POWs. They were enormously cheerful and friendly – maybe they were just delighted at being safe. They had no guards and were just dropped off a truck in the morning and picked up again in the evening. The ladies of the village gave them tea (and a little more, I suspect, there being almost no men around).

They were replaced by Germans who I suspect were captured in the Western Desert because they were all marvellously tanned. Apart from one or two old timers these were powerfully built young men, and they were very friendly to us kids. They got the same treatment from the villagers. They were also stunningly hard working without any supervision at all.

A while back I saw a TV documentary about a POW camp in Yorkshire. At the end of the wart the rule was ‘no fraternisation’. Fat chance. At Xmas 1945 they were all invited to church and to lunch afterwards, despite stringent food rationing.

And some time in the mid-80s a guy came into my office bearing a beautifully made wooden pencil box. The maker had carved his name and home address in it and it was apparent that it had been made by a German POW. Amazingly we were able to track him down, and we attended a party at which the Burgomaster returned it to him. He said that his time as a POW in England were amongst the happiest days of his life. He had been sent to work on a farm where he was treated with nothing but kindness and lived there as a member of the family.

Now the crooks who run FIFA have decreed that England will not be allowed to wear the poppy for their game against Spain. The idiots don’t seem to understand that this is not triumphalism but a show of remembrance, respect, and a warning about the consequences of going to war.  There is nothing vengeful about the British (when the great German fighter pilot Adolph Galland died, there were more RAF types at his funeral than German fliers).