Cherry blossom days

In the days following the momentous events in Egypt earlier this year I heard a brief exchange between a woman and a young man. She had not been able to hear what he had called out to her across the road.

“Sorry?”
“I said, I like you better without the hat!”
“Oh. Right.”

I told her I thought it was a compliment and would have forgotten it if it were not for the fact that she was a sturdy, no nonsense British police woman and he may well have been Egyptian . For a moment, thousands of miles away from Tahrir Square, the uniform that she wore represented so much more than it did to the average Brit. In Egypt the police had been obliged to withdraw from the streets, hiding away from an enraged population who had finally had enough of their corruption and cruelty.

As I grew up in London it was impossible to ignore the many refugees who regarded it as a place of safety. They brought with them their food and customs, for the most part keeping them behind their front doors unless a bond was formed with neighbours or business contacts. Most of the time they did not confide their reasons for fleeing their countries. When they did, it was often a shock to those who had grown up in a free and democratic society, even hard to believe.

Hardest of all to hear was the news that someone my family had come to like had died a prolonged and dreadful death at the hands of people who had lured him back to his former home. We came to understand why the children next door would not drink perfectly safe tap water. A childhood in Beirut meant a mistrust of any that did not come from a bottle as you never knew whether damage to pipes had led to contamination. I watched their mother pull handfuls of crumpled £20 pound notes from the pocket of her fur coat in Harrods toy department to pay for anything that would take away her little girl‘s memory of being kidnapped. Her au pair wept as she watched Sadat and Begin make peace on our television in 1977.

When I moved to the suburbs I found that I had not left these sad, sometimes terrifying tales behind me. There are pockets of the rest of the world all over the outskirts of every British city. From the restaurants and cafes where proprietors wait for the lunch time rush to the empty offices where cleaners spend their evenings, there is always someone who remembers long ago and far away, a time when things were better. Last night the scent of hyacinths wafted towards me which, at this time of year, speaks to me of Iran and exile.

Some of the best stories come from minicab drivers. I used to hear a lot about the former life of a young Sri Lankan, a former policeman who had been obliged to leave his wife and child behind when he fled from death threats. He pulled over to show me the scar on his leg, sustained in an accident, and gave a graphic account of what it is like to be in a car while being attacked by an elephant. He was waiting for his family to join him but I have not seen him since before the Boxing Day Tsunami of 2004.

In the suburbs we have the pleasure of seeing blossom at this time of year as the trees whose ancestors were brought back from the East give us a brief but lovely show. In Japan there would have been picnics under the trees as they came into bloom, spreading from the south in a wave of creamy pink. This year the picnics and celebration of Spring have been forgotten as the country comes to terms with the aftermath of the latest tsunami.

Here, anyone who looks even slightly Japanese is avoiding eye contact in case someone mistakes their nationality and expresses their sadness. It is hard to know what to say when I do encounter someone who is actually from Japan. The enormity of what has happened is hard to take in. In a matter of days all those petals will fall and clog up the ventilators in cars parked along the street and create sticky drifts in the gutter. There is nothing to make me think that those trees will not blossom again next Spring but for many people thousands of miles away it must feel as though the world has come to an end.

British Red Cross appeal for Japan
Shelterbox
Save the Children

Mention the war

These shoes have been around for as long as I can remember. They have moved from the bottom of one wardrobe to another but they are still with me, a relic of World War Two. Along with a copy of “Make Do and Mend” they are some of the ordinary things I own that are left over from an extraordinary period in Britain’s history.

Recently there has been considerable and deserved mention of the deeds of the RAF during the Battle of Britain. For those who now live in London’s suburbs it is hard to understand the degree of fear and danger experienced by the ordinary people who lived in those houses before we did. Here and there you will find structures, both overgrown and reused, that were built as part of the plan to defend the UK. There are of course memorials to those in uniform but very little remains to remind us of the impact on everyday life.



When I visited Medway Drive in Perivale I could see nothing to indicate that six people were killed and thirty others injured in this quiet street near the A40. I was looking for a gap in the terrace filled by a post war building. Mindful that a surprising number of that generation still live in the houses they were born in I looked for someone in the right age group and struck gold. I was introduced to someone who had lived in the area since 1935 and remembered the incident very clearly. A parachute mine came down here on the night of 25th September 1940 and King George and Queen Elizabeth came to inspect the damage. Photographs taken at the time show them striding up the street in the company of the mayor and local officials. I was amazed to learn that the damage was repaired straight away and found that one of those I was speaking to, a child at the time, had been paid a penny a day to brush clean the salvaged bricks for reuse. The houses in this street were then no more than three years old and I suppose restrictions on the use of building materials were yet to be imposed. It is now impossible to tell that anything so devastating happened here.

Within minutes we were talking about the difference between an Anderson shelter and a Morrison shelter, what it was like to hear a Doodlebug (apparently it was when the whistle stopped that people began to run in all directions) and how one milkman coped during an air raid. They remembered the spivs at the dog track and the people who did not survive. They mentioned the policeman who was not provided with a free shelter (he earned too much) and sent his daughters into the neighbour’s for safety. There were memories of particular raids and of a woman who turned up to work at Sainsbury’s in Greenford with bandaged hands, still trying to work out how they got burned as she rode along on her bicycle.



It was a frightening time. Huge craters were the reminders of near misses. One of my new acquaintances described how he was on a paper round when the warning went out. He rushed under cover only to feel a great weight suddenly crushing him. He thought he had been hurt but in fact a woman had seen him head for shelter and leapt in after him. His friend told me that on hearing a blast and unsure as to what to do he had stood rigid with fear while his sister dived to one side. He had every right to be terrified. Five days after Medway Drive suffered casualties six enemy aircraft dropped bombs in the vicinity of Mornington Road in Greenford, though they were in fact trying to hit RAF Northolt, their gunners taking the opportunity to strafe the ground. A six year old boy called Keith Peters was shot, one of thirty-seven people killed or fatally injured in the daylight attack. His home was damaged beyond repair and then targeted by looters. What must it have been like for his mother who after the war lived in the rebuilt house until her death? It is unlikely that the present occupant of this address is aware of its sad history. On a quiet day in suburbia, almost seventy years after the event, it is difficult to imagine the sudden terror that descended upon the people here.



I used to wonder what these mounds in Hanger Hill Park were all about. Apart from the lumps and bumps there is a concrete block at the end of one and a scattering of concrete squares that seal off the entrances to an air raid shelter. Again there is nothing to tell you that this was the site of several deaths in 1940. It seems that even for those who managed to reach a shelter there was no guarantee that they would make it through a raid. One of the people who died here was known to my friend in Medway Drive, a man who had thrown himself on top of his wife and succeeded in protecting her.

There was a matter of factness and absence of anger in these recollections from two men who would have had every right to feel bitterness towards the enemy. When I hear John Cleese mutter “Don’t mention the war!" and harangue his German guests in an episode of “Fawlty Towers” first broadcast thirty years after the end of the war I still hold my breath, aghast. It was meant to shock and was not aired in Germany when the series was originally shown there but I wonder how it would have gone down in the Britain of the 1940s?



Take a look at the archives of photographs from this period and you will see nothing but smiling faces. Land girls digging up potatoes in Greenford, in fields that have long since been built on. The mayor’s wife collecting clothes for the children of factory workers. A man sitting in the ruins of his house but beaming at the camera as if it was the funniest thing that had ever happened to him. Perhaps he was in shock or just glad to be alive, who knows? It is possible, even probable, that the less positive images were quite deliberately erased from some memories as well as from archives. Like shoes pushed to the back of a wardrobe the bad times were put to one side.

They kept calm and carried on, railwaymen, nurses and doctors, firemen, the WVS, shop workers who swept up the broken glass time after time, the makers of endless cups of tea and strangers who held a hand until the final moment came. Air raid wardens who must have seen things that gave them nightmares, bodies blown to pieces including those of people they knew. This former ARP hut which is at one end of Ealing Village now shelters bicycles.



In 1940 these people had no idea how many weary hungry years of war lay ahead of them. When it was finally over the world had been turned upside down and many saw this as an opportunity to put new ideas into practice. I wonder if we would have had the NHS if it were not for World War II? I hope that in years to come as much will be said about the valiant efforts of those who kept the home fires burning as has been said of those in uniform. It is up to us, the generations who gained from what they did, to recall and applaud their bravery and sacrifice.

For Violet, who drove ambulances during the war and was particularly fond of Marlene Dietrich. Thank you for the shoes.



I am indebted to my long suffering partner, who not only acted as chauffeur and advisor on military stuff but provided me with the excellent “Ealing, Acton and Southall at War” by Dennis Upton (The History Press), in which I found the information about the attack on Mornington Road.

Today's non-story

It seems that the Prime minister’s hand writing needs work. It would also appear that he sometimes writes letters in a hurry. We learn this courtesy of the Sun newspaper who have filmed the distressed mother of a soldier killed in Afghanistan who received one of his letters (“Exclusive to the Sun”) and plugged it on every news channel.

Jacquie Janes is in the process of grieving for her son, a 20 year old Grenadier Guardsman who died on the 5th of October this year. The Prime Minister sent her a handwritten letter offering his condolences. He spelt her surname incorrectly (“James” instead of “Janes") along with the words “greatest”, “condolences”, “yours” and “colleagues”.

Jacquie is very upset about this. In the Sun’s article she states that she is also upset about the fact that our armed forces are under equipped. This would suggest that she was predisposed to regard Mr. Brown’s condolences as offensive, whatever form they came in. So whether the letter was a calligraphic masterpiece or something cold and formulaic churned out by a flunky on a PC and signed in the PM’s absence by someone we’ve never heard of, the Sun would still have had a story.

In the last few days I have wondered whether it is wise for those bereaved by the present engagement in Afghanistan to allow the press into their lives beyond issuing the most basic statement. This week’s headline in my local paper was “Iceland bans poppy sellers” and the front page features the photograph taken some time ago of a local woman whose son was killed in Iraq. They obviously phoned her for a comment. The thing is, they will now always phone her for a comment. If they don’t she may wonder if they have stopped caring.

It is easy for someone made vulnerable through bereavement to find a journalist (and I use that word loosely where the Sun is concerned) a good listener who can feel their pain, especially if compassion fatigue has set in amongst others of their acquaintance. Journalists know this and use it. Even those we might regard as more reliable and sincere have an eye to their careers and what they will gain from their collaboration with someone like Jacquie Janes. They never forget that they are trying to get and hold an audience. Her sorrow is grist to someone’s mill. In this case it is the Sun who will sell many, many newspapers on the back of this ( yes, they have been fundraising for “our boys“ - it‘s great PR).

The Prime Minister is an extraordinarily busy man. He is blind in one eye and the sight in his other eye is deteriorating. He is running a country and engaging with other powerful people who make decisions that affect the lives of billions of people every day. He found time to write a letter to someone who does not fall into that category. Today, following the fuss over his letter, he telephoned Jacquie. That phone call won’t make any difference because the damage has been done. The story was not about Jacquie, her son or poorly equipped British forces. This was about the Sun’s owner and his politics. However you feel about Gordon Brown don’t lose sight of how the press manipulates the public mood. Don’t fall into the trap.

The PM can write a reasonably tidy letter. How do I know this? I attended an exhibition at the Pitshanger Manor Art Gallery called “Therefore I Am” organised by Breakaway, a charity that supports people with learning disabilities. It offers those visiting the exhibition the opportunity to complete a card that has the words “…therefore I am” in the bottom right hand corner. There are framed cards from Paul Daniels, Lynne Reid Banks and Lynda Bellingham amongst others.

In pride of place is one from Gordon Brown. His hand writing is as untidy as it is in Jacquie’s letter. I can’t remember anything about the standard of spelling. What I do remember is that he went into some detail to describe why he went into politics and his father’s influence on his life. Of course, you could argue that this is great PR, but there has been little publicity about the exhibition which is tucked into a side room at the gallery. I don’t think I would have been able to make that phone call after what has been said about that letter. Gordon Brown is not perfect but I would not be in his shoes for a £45million lottery win.

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/campaigns/our_boys/2720283/Prime-Minister-Gordon-Brown-couldnt-even-get-our-name-right.html

Red for a reason

We are a few days away from Remembrance Sunday and Armistice Day. On Saturday we got our poppies from a Royal British Legion collector in Ealing and slotted them in where we could. I have seen them on people I would not have expected to have been wearing them. I have worn one every year since childhood, my mother expected it of me and as I grew older if I hadn’t already bought one myself she would provide it. When the words “Haig Fund” disappeared from the centre I noticed it. If I ended up with one that had a leaf as well as a flower I felt a little smug. For years I’ve wondered why they didn’t make ones with pins.

Papaver rhoeas, the cornfield poppy, grows easily in the disturbed ground of battlefields and it was a common sight to those who took part in the First World War. A Canadian surgeon called John McRae immortalised the image of silky blood red flowers amongst the crosses that, in 1915, were already marking the first of millions of graves in his poem “In Flanders Fields“. Many still lie where they fell, waiting to be discovered by the turn of the plough.

Red poppies were eventually sold as fundraisers by the British Legion which was founded within three years of the end of the Great War to act as a voice for ex-servicemen (it became the Royal British Legion in 1971 following the granting of a Royal Charter). White poppies were first sold in 1933 by the Co-operative Women’s Guild who wanted to support the many disabled veterans and prevent further wars. They are now provided by the Peace Pledge Union.

Over the years I have seen a few white poppies worn by old soldiers in the parade past the Cenotaph in Whitehall but the vast majority wear red ones. I haven’t taken much notice of white poppies or those who wear them until now but they were brought to my attention by someone on Facebook who was encouraging members to join the White Poppy group that has been set up on the site. I followed the link to the official website and ended up feeling quite angry as a consequence. It wasn’t just that they had used the image and story of Harry Patch, the last remaining WW1 veteran, to promote their cause.

I object to the assumption that seems to have been made by some white poppy wearers that those who wear a red one are absolutely in favour of war. If a similar, negative generalisation was made about those who promote the white one there would be an outcry from the media savvy anti-war movement. Old soldiers are usually the first to tell you that war is a terrible thing. They don’t need lessons from a generation saved from conscription by a standing army made up of volunteers.

These volunteers sometimes do what they are ordered to even though they do not have much faith in the politicians who send them to war. They go back into the theatre of operations in spite of a lack of adequate equipment and their own fears. It is the efforts of people like this that has made it possible for others to talk about and live in peace. They don’t just go to kill - they build essential bridges, repair schools and hospitals, train police forces and armies. Sometimes they do it in their free time because they want to help, encouraging their friends and families back home to fundraise for that cause. The five British soldiers whose deaths were announced today died alongside two of the Afghan policemen they were mentoring. They were doing something positive.

On its Facebook page the White Poppy group states that “The White Poppy symbolises the belief that there are better ways to resolve conflicts than killing strangers.” The Peace Pledge Union believes that the solution to situations such as Afghanistan is a UN force. Try telling that to the British soldiers who, under the auspices of the UN, tried and failed to protect people on all sides of the conflict in the former Yugoslavia. Hamstrung by their mandate, they and forces from other countries were obliged to stand back and watch while men, women and children were herded away to their deaths in places whose names have become as familiar to us as the battlefields of the Somme and Ypres were to those fighting in World War One. I’d love to see how those who regard the UN as the cure for all ills would cope with the nightmares that these people still get because they were not allowed to use force.

To make those blue helmets as effective as they should be you first have to sort out the lumbering apparatus that is the UN and that will take some doing. In the meantime are we expected to stand back and watch as another Rwanda, another Bosnia, another Somalia starts up because conflict is a terrible thing? It makes me wonder if those who are against war at any cost have a genuine understanding of the sort of people our forces are up against. How do you reason with those prepared to cut off the purple stained fingers of voters in Afghanistan? How do you talk to men who behead foreign workers because they wanted to feed their families?

Apart from that, I don’t think the efforts of “peacemakers” are always welcomed by those they are trying to help. Live rolling news allowed millions of viewers to see a crude banner made from a painted sheet held up by Iraqis following the fall of Baghdad to US forces. The hotel they were standing in had been a temporary home to foreign peace activists who were hoping to put off air raids. Judging by what it said on the banner the Iraqis they were standing shoulder to shoulder with were pleased to see them go and the cavalry arrive. One of the words rhymed with “bankers”. In 2005 four men, including Norman Kember were kidnapped in Iraq. One of them was shot dead but the rest were eventually rescued by British special forces who had spent weeks looking for them. All those resources used up on peacemakers who should not have put themselves in danger.

I accept that in a democracy we have the right to express an opinion as long as it does not deliberately inspire hate and violence. If a veteran chooses to wear a white poppy I have even more respect for him because he has made his choice based on genuine experience. However those who wear red ones have the right to take pride in their achievements and if that means parading with brass bands then so be it. The guns carried in these parades are for the defence of our country as much as they are for war abroad and I take pride in the men and women who carry them. If it ever became necessary for me to pick up one of those guns myself I hope that I would be able acquit myself as well as they do.

What many of my contemporaries forget or have never learned, cushioned as they are from reality by the freedom made for them from war, is that the true soldier loves peace but it isn’t always an option.

http://www.poppy.org.uk
http://www.poppyscotland.org.uk/
http://www.whitepoppy.org.uk/
http://www.greatwar.co.uk/poems/john-mccrae-in-flanders-fields.htm/
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/ceriradford/3641401/Stop_the_crusades/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4844800.stm

Remembering

There has been a fuss over the failure of the French administration to invite a member of the British Royal Family to the commemoration of the 65th anniversary of the D Day landings. If French commentators are to be believed Mr Sarkozy was so keen on a love-in with his new best friend, US President Oabama, that he forgot about asking along the only head of state who took a part in WW2. Mr Obabama’s intervention has meant that Prince Charles will now be attending the event. We will at least be spared the prospect of the Queen’s outfits being compared with those of the elegant clothes horse that is Madame Sarkozy. The true stars of the show are, as ever, being overlooked.

I’m not sure why the memory of a particular D Day veteran makes me well up. We were in the art gallery of the Imperial War Museum in 2004, standing in front of a painting of Arromanches, liberated on the 6th June 1944. A pensioner was standing next to us wearing his beret and medals. He had a huge smile on his face. “I was there,” he said, “Arrowmancheese!” He couldn’t pronounce the name of the place where he might have been killed but in the tradition of Tommies from Wipers to The Sandpit he had made it sound more interesting. He didn’t tell us anything else about himself and we have no idea what he did there but the thought of that encounter still moves me to tears.

I wonder whether most people understand the hurt felt over that delayed invitation by many of those marking the 65th anniversary today. The 60th anniversary of the D Day landings in Normandy was a big occasion. Everyone from the BBC to the Royal Family turned out for events in the UK and France. There seemed to be a sense that this was the last time that so many survivors of the Allied landings would be able to gather at one time, as age and ill health would now begin to take their toll. There were special events, exhibitions, television programmes, in particular there was an attempt to explain to a much younger generation the significance of the event and the role played by their grandfathers and great-grandfathers.

There must have been a time when the Second World War was something that most wanted to forget, especially those on the home front. Victory in Europe meant the removal of tape from windows because there were no more air raids, no more blackouts and nights spent in shelters. Today we make do and mend because we choose to recycle. It is hard to imagine what it was like to long for new clothes. Goodbye Utility, hello Dior. For those who had been away for years, so long in fact that their children did not recognise them, there were different things to forget. The sight of good friends blown to pieces. The fear and hunger of those who were prisoners of war. The terrible recurring memories to be endured in silence. All that misery, anger and pain buried in the work and play of “normal” life.

My great uncle, whose part in “The Great War” ended in a shell hole where he was found with a broken leg by the opposition, rarely talked about what had happened to him. He became a clergyman in the years between the wars and returned to France In 1944 as a chaplain in the Territorial Army. My limited understanding of what he went through comes from Sunday afternoons watching “The World At War” as a child. I remember craning my neck to look at the memorial to the Royal Artillery at Hyde Park Corner when we passed it on the bus because there was something sad and beautiful about those caped figures. I got to know the mock up of a WWI trench at the Imperial War Museum quite well although I have to be honest - this little girl didn’t really get it. Someone I knew loved black and white war films because they reminded her of the exciting and liberated days when she drove an ambulance during air raids. Looking back I realise that references were made constantly to those wars because they had such a profound effect on those who had lived through them but I had no real understanding of that at the time.




Living with someone who spends quite a lot of his time making models of planes, tanks and ships has left me a little more informed about WW2 but it was Northern Ireland and the Falklands that had the most impact on me. I grew up in a city that was under threat from IRA bombs so I couldn’t help but understand some of the fear. I watched the news reports from the Falklands but it took years for me to develop a real understanding of what war can do to those who engage in it. The odd thing is that it was my encounter with someone who didn’t go to the Falklands that stays in my mind.

In 1990 I got talking to an exceptionally tall man who used to hang out in the subway at South Kensington Underground Station. He clearly wasn’t a rough sleeper but he usually had a can in his hand. Eventually he told me that he had been persuaded to join the Welsh Guards by his father, which he could deal with until the Falklands came along. He had not been on the boat when it left and in the course of avoiding the MPs who had come to find him he had jumped from a window causing irreparable damage to his back. The irony was that he had to live with the guilt of avoiding the tragedy of the Sir Galahad and the Sir Tristram because he deserted whilst being on a pension for his disability. In a home of his own but marginalised by society, he felt that he had more in common with homeless alcoholics than the men he had trained with.

He isn’t the only one I have come across who had been talked into a career in the armed forces (usually by a civilian parent) at a time when becoming involved in an something other than a tour of Northern Ireland was unlikely. It was a bit of shock suddenly to find yourself being sent to war. I don’t judge them as I do not know whether I would have the courage to fight if I was told to. It means that I am all the more impressed by those who are joining up now, with a clearer knowledge of the risks they face. They can hardly have escaped the news reports and videos posted on the internet make it difficult to hide the truth. They have something that isn’t often mentioned these days, a sense of duty. I heard that word, duty, used by a member of the Royal British Legion when I stopped by at the local branch to take a photograph. It is that sense of duty that makes someone organise the sale of the poppies that fund the Legion’s work, and keep on doing it for thirty years. I hope that a sense of duty is behind the attendance by Prince Charles at the commemoration in France and any future invitations from Mr. Sarkozy.

“Their lives have ended, but dreams are not yet lost
if you remember in your laugh and song
these boys who do not sing and laughed not long.”

from “The Lost” by Herbert Corby




http://www.britishlegion.org.uk/
http://www.remembering.org.uk/ra_memorial.htm