His story, her story, my story or your story

Published: Fri, 05/08/20

So, today is VE day, 75 years since the end of the war in Europe. The fighting to conquer Japan continued until the 15th of August. The final end of WW2 was still three months away even after Germany had capitulated but the end of the European was was still a significant event. In an idle moment I found myself doing some mental arithmetic. Our daughter Iduna was born in December 2019. I was born in March 1959, less than 14 years after WW2 ended and only 40 years after WW1 ended. Iduna was born 37 years after the Falklands war (which somehow seems like only yesterday) and the American Civil war, ending 1865 is more recent to my date of birth (94 years ago) than WW1 is to Iduna’s (101 years). Yet Iduna’s great grand father served as a special constable for at least part of the duration. (As I have written before he could not serve in uniform as he had a serious health issue which made him unfit for military service. However, many
of his friends and relatives did serve, and some died.)

As I said, an idle moment of fairly pointless mental arithmetic, but it is still useful to realise that time moves on, and what seem like cataclysmic events become footnotes in history.

Yet the very word ‘history’ breaks down to his (or her, or our) story and it is our story which makes us who we are. Apparently the American Civil war still has an influence on the politics of the USA. I do know that displaying the Confederate flag tends to create some strong reactions even today. In Europe the swastika still makes quite an impact too. Certain words and images can cause offence but denying someone the opportunity to remember and tell their story is part of a process of erasing identity. Often it is argued that some identities are best erased, I know that even mentioning the Confederate battle flag or the image associated with the Third Reich will trigger reactions in some readers. Without a real knowledge and understanding of ‘our story’ it is very hard to make sense of the present and easily avoidable mistakes will be made again in the future. Do those who are so keen to edit history just want to tidy up the
past? Or are they actually hoping to create a more easily manipulated population for the future?

I will do my best to share a sense of history, or even ‘her story’ with Iduna and in many ways it will be her story too. She can see her Great grandfather’s Special Constable truncheon which I still have. We can share the stories my family told about WW2. My Uncle Ernest who was captured at Dunkirk and didn’t get home again until late in 1945. How her grandfather dodged Doodlebugs in London in 1944. My brother can tell her about his six month tour of the Falklands as a young officer in 1983 helping to clear up the detritus and destruction of even that short war. Maybe her uncle will share how he got extra kudos with his men because he had been at school with a pop singer called Sally Anne Triplet who had some chart hits in the early 1980s. My brother got in touch and the young lady was happy to respond to a request for signed photographs. A trivial detail, but it put some smiles on the faces of young soldiers 8000 miles from
home.

I don’t know how interested our daughter will be in history in general, or ‘her story’ in particular. There will be a delicate balance of sharing a certain amount of ‘family story’ and then letting her develop her own level of interest in the rest. One day it would be good to take Iduna to Sweden and show her the numerous rune stones which were mainly commissioned but families who needed to ensure that their stories were not forgotten. As it says in Stanza 72 of the Havamal. ‘Stones seldom stand by the roads unless raised kin for kin.’

So, what is today? I am not really sure. The 11th of November became part of the religious calendar in the 1920s as families and communities raised stones and other memorials to those who fell in the first world war. When the war memorials were established and remembrance day instigated it wasn’t so much a matter of history, as seeking to heal raw grief and lay to rest the ghosts of lost sons, brothers, fathers, husbands, and sweethearts. What is the purpose of ‘celebrating’ the 75th anniversary of the defeat of Germany while locked down for fear of a virus? What would those who returned from five years of hard fighting and self-sacrifice in 1945 make of where we are today?

I don’t really have any conclusions, today is meant to be about history and a historical event which Britain is supposed to be proud of. One day we will look back at this time as history and, whatever the real lesson is, I hope we will have learned it.

regards

Graham