The Sunday Reflection #29 - Remembrance Sunday 2024

 One of the traditions of The Barnet Eye blog is our Remembrance Sunday feature. To me, it is important. I always have a quick look at a few of the older editions before I write it, it helps give me some perspective. It is quite an interesting exercise to see how our moods and views change. I also do this as it is important to me and I want something that is not just "How I feel right now". The world is standing at a crossroads. When I read this blog as I prepare next year, we'll have had eleven months of Donald Trump's second term. He'll be nearly a quarter of the way through his term. I was asked if there was anything positive to be had from Trump's re-election. My answer? He didn't start any wars in his first term. If he doesn't start any in his second, then maybe he will go down as a good president. Since he departed, we've seen the Ukraine war and the most awful situation in the middle east develop. Hundreds of thousands of women are mourning dead sons and daughters in countries such as Ukraine, Russia, Israel, Gaza, Lebanon, etc. Remembrance for them is a very raw subject. Trump has vowed to solve all of these crises. For the sake of humanity, I hope he does, but the resolution has to be just and fair. As I always do, I think of my Dad, a WW2 bomber pilot. He always insisted that the main purpose of Remembrance Sunday was to make sure we never forget the horrors of war. He once said "I'd happily forget the whole bloody thing tomorrow, if the world changed and we abolished wars". He didn't mean he'd forget the men who were his friends who died. We were watching a TV series about the war at the time, put together for Remembrance Sunday. He was a bit peeved that it was just a tad too jingoistic for his tastes. A pet dislike of my Dad was the 'Top Brass'. The Generals who directed the campaigns. I once asked him which WW2 general he admired the most. To my amazement, he said Erwin Rommel. I asked why. He said "He was just about the only general who actually cared about the blokes fighting for him". He lent me a book about Rommels life. 

When I read it as a teenager, I didn't really get it. I found the book during lockdown and re-read it. Although no one can excuse Rommel's membership of The Nazi Party, as a general and a military man, he was exceptional. He also came to realise that Hitler was a lunatic and would destroy Germany and he paid for this with his life. The key turning point was when Adolf Hitler ordered him to not concede and inch to the allies and to fight to the last man. The scales fell from Rommel's eyes and he realised exactly what Hitler really was. He ignored the orders, masterminding a brilliant tactical retreat and saving as many of his army as he could. Contrast that with General Paulus in Stalingrad, who obeyed such orders, resulting in the total destruction of his army and hastening the end of the war. My father was of the view that the "Top Brass" in the RAF didn't have the same concern for the bomber crews they commanded. Crews were sacrificed in far too many futile missions with little military value. I asked if he ever took part in such a mission. He said that as his squadron was operating obsolete Wellington Bombers from Italy, his targets were almost all tactical in support of military operations or sound strategic targets such as oil fields. I think he always felt that the RAF should have been spending more time bombing military targets and less time carpet bombing civilians. Sadly he's not here to really give us the full perspective. 

I asked him once about whether he thought the carpet bombing could be justified. His reply was that when you are dealing with someone like Adolf Hitler, anything and everything was justified. I asked if it was the most effective use of the RAF and he was less certain. He said "All bomber crews preferred bombing weapons factories, armies, airfields, bridges, railways and oil fields than civilians and there were plenty we didn't hit". I also asked if I thought any good came from the carpet bombing. He said "It made Germany realise that starting wars is a bad thing".

I was 24 when my Dad passed away. If I could change anything in my life, I'd have had him survive long enough to get all of this down properly in this blog. As it was, I wasn't interested in his war service at the time he passed away. I was more interested in music. I didn't properly value the wealth of experience he had. I was just a young man, who had a very different life experience to him. I respected him and his efforts, but it wasn't something I had any interest in exploring. Now it fascinates me. What was ironic in the extreme was that when I'd started playing music, my Dad was not in the least interested. In the last year of his life, he started to take an interest. He came to see us at The Grahame Park festival, which was a big open air gig. He was actually quite impressed. He said it reminded him a little bit of when bands and artists would come over and perform for the troops. He liked the fact that everyone was having a good time. He complemented me on the way I dealt with some young scalliwags, who'd been giving some of the other bands a hard time. I told them that hooligans like them were always welcome at False Dots gigs and complemented them on their demented dancing. You may wonder what this has to do with Remembrance Sunday? Well things have come full circle. Today, Dad would have been most proud. He was a member of the Mill Hill Services Club, a club I've now been a member of for a fair few years. Every year, the club has a Remembrance Service for fallen members, relatives and friends. This year, I was proud to enlist the trumpet player from my band, to play the last post. Tom Hammond gave an impeccable rendition. We then had a pint and a couple of games of pool. Dad would have approved. We live in uncertain times, but one lesson Dad always impressed was make the best of it and try and have fun, even in adversity. 

Here is the service #WeWillRemember

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