What Am I Thinking? (original) (raw)

Abstract

What am I thinking? I’ve just come back from helping at a ‘meet the veterans’ event at a major museum. I am privileged to count several WW2 vets among my friends, and what I am thinking, as we approach the 65th anniversary of the end of that war, and the 70th anniversary of the Battle of Britain, is that soon we will only have mute witnesses to those days. Our museums are full of the silent machinery of war, the voiceless ephemera, the black and white photographs etc., but our greatest and most precious national treasure, our people, in this case are becoming older and fewer. A World War two veteran who saw it all is going to be ninety or so at the youngest now, and even those who were in at the end part of the war are in their mid eighties, and many of them have lingering health issues. It has been my honour to stand with veterans on Normandy beaches and in the many war cemeteries, to sit with them in gardens in the British countryside and around displays in formal museums, to eat and drink with them and to hear their stories. I have recently helped one vet to find the grave site of a friend who he last saw on the eve of D-Day, and who was among the very many who did not live to see June 7th 1944. What am I thinking? I’m thinking how my generation simply cannot conceive what these men and women went through, and I’m thinking that I have no way to truly know what that time can have been like. I’m thinking that I never want to know what that feels like, and yet I want to know everything, so that I can pass on these stories. I’m thinking how the fields that Tom, my late father (a WW2 vet, of course, like virtually all of his generation) played in as a child have now been concreted over and built on, and how the world he fought to keep free is soon going to forget what he and his mates achieved, when they are all passed away. I’m thinking that by an accident of birthdate I missed being a participant in all the major conflicts in the 20th century. I’m thinking how lucky I am. Dr Dave Evans, historian www.normandyd-day.com

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