My dad was a World War II veteran and was alive when World War I began and ended!
But do I qualify as a veteran since I had an army ID card from birth till I was 23 and then I served as a VA. Chaplain in Augusta for two years and was paid by the military archdiocese?
But do I qualify as a veteran since I had an army ID card from birth till I was 23 and then I served as a VA. Chaplain in Augusta for two years and was paid by the military archdiocese?
3 comments:
We rightly honor our veterans. My father was also a veteran (a British one), who served in the Second World War and took part in the invasion of Normandy as a member of the Royal Army Ordnance Corps attached to the 49th Infantry Division (the Polar Bears). However, to maintain critical perspective, in this honoring it also seems appropriate to recall the words of a famous British soldier who lost his life fighting in the trenches in the First World War aka “The Great War” aka “The War to End All Wars”:
It seemed that out of the battle I escaped
Down some profound dull tunnel, long since scooped
Through granites which titanic wars had groined.
Yet also there encumbered sleepers groaned,
Too fast in thought or death to be bestirred.
Then, as I probed them, one sprang up, and stared
With piteous recognition in fixed eyes,
Lifting distressful hands as if to bless.
And by his smile, I knew that sullen hall;
By his dead smile I knew we stood in Hell.
With a thousand fears that vision’s face was grained;
Yet no blood reached there from the upper ground,
And no guns thumped, or down the flues made moan.
“Strange friend,” I said, “Here is no cause to mourn.”
“None,” said the other, “Save the undone years,
The hopelessness. Whatever hope is yours,
Was my life also. . . . .
I am the enemy you killed, my friend.
I knew you in the dark; for so you frowned
Yesterday through me as you jabbed and killed.
I parried; but my hands were loath and cold.
Let us sleep now. . .”
From Wilfred Owen, Strange Meeting. The poem was published in 1919 but was written in the spring or early summer of 1918. Owen was killed one week before the end of the War.
My mother was German and was on the receiving end of Allied bombing in Cologne during the Second World War, much as my father’s family was on the receiving end of German bombing in Southampton. In the words of the famous question in Pete Seeger’s folk ballad “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?”— When will they ever learn? And so it seems appropriate to let the great Marlene Dietrich tell it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLAxbQxyJSQ
Anonymous 2
My grandfather had what might be described as a 'good war'. He was a regular soldier, having joined the 5th Dragoon Guards in 1911, and was a corporal on mobilization in August 1914. He took part in the cavalry action at Nery (1 Sept 1914) and was wounded, his horse killed under him. Hospitalized in England until April 1915, he missed 1st Ypres, which accounted for many of the 'Old Contemptibles' - that 'red little, dead little army'.
When he rejoined his regiment (now promoted sergeant) he found it manning the trenches as infantry. When a 'big push' was in the offing they were re-united with their horses in order to exploit the breakthrough which eluded the Allies until 1918; for the rest of the time they resumed an infantry role. Dismounted cavalry were regarded as 'at rest' even though they were manning front-line trenches! He continued on the Western Front until the end of the war.
In August 1918 he was commissioned on the battlefield and transferred to 2nd Bn South Lancashire Regiment. On 24 October he won the Military Cross in the last action fought by his battalion before the Armistice.
He retired from the army in 1922, with a tax-free gratuity of £1000, a considerable amount in those days. He moved to America and had a second career in the diplomatic service, becoming British Consul in Philadelphia, for which he was awarded the MBE. He retired in 1957 and died ten years later.
The Great War was a disaster for European civilization but once embarked on it had to be won, and by the end the main effort in the main theatre against the main enemy was being made by British and Empire forces. It was unique in the history of British arms, and resulted in outright victory. Some acknowledgement of this was made this year, but overall the remembrance of the War is negative and lachrymose. By all means acknowledge the sacrifice made by so many, but it does no service to my grandfather and many others like him to overlook their splendid achievement.
When it comes to the Second World War neither the British nor the Americans can claim the chief credit for the defeat of German arms. The main theatre was the Eastern, not the Western Front.
PS In the 1980s I was attached to the staff of 49 Inf Bde, based at Chilwell, Nottingham. They still had the polar bear emblem!
Without America, there would have been neither an eastern nor western front....only a German front
Post a Comment