Remembrance Days
Here in 2024, the recent November 11th Remembrance Day arrived on a Monday. Here in North Vancouver, Irene, Grant and I attended the ceremony at the cenotaph in Victory Square. It was an overcast, chill day but the rain held off.
I don’t know what I feel about attending this ceremony every year, sometimes I have to force myself out of the door. I do know, Dear Friends, that I will attend. I have learned more and more over the years about why I will attend.
In the early 1920s my grandmother found somebody to marry. She was lucky. Why? Because there weren’t many eligible men around at that time in the years after the First World War, millions had been killed in action. Jimmy Davidson found Eleanor Chessor at a church picnic. He was a miller in Aberdeenshire so had not gone off to war. Men in the farming industry were exempt from service. Britain needed to feed its people. My other grandfather was not so lucky. Dr. Peter Tolmie served in the war but he was a surgeon, so he was faced with the daunting task of saving the lives of young men who had become wounded. Fit and healthy one moment, amputated or blind the next.
When I was a teenager, every Christmas my father invited two sisters, the Miss Thoms, for Christmas dinner at our house. With the self-centredness of youth I took no interest in why these two cailleach were suddenly in our house on Christmas Day and at no other time of the year. I later learned that both of them had lost their boyfriends in the ‘Great War’, as it was known then, and had never married. Presumably they had not found a young man thereafter because of the aforementioned paucity. But, I also think there was some survivors’ guilt, a determined loyalty to what could have been.
My father, Dr. Wattie Davidson, had completed his medical training before war’s end in the Second World War and had been despatched to India and Palestine. He did not last long. On December 17th, 1944, his 20 year old brother serving in the RAF in Italy was shot down and killed over Forli in Northern Italy. He was sent home because he was the oldest son of a widowed mother.
In 1970, I was living with my other grandmother in Nairn and working in the Nairnshire Laundry. The time came for me to return home to the family in Somerset. My Great Uncle Jim who was living with Grandma at the time offered to help to carry my bags the half a mile or so down to the bus station. When I arrived home and let slip that he had done so, my mother was not at all happy with me. It wasn’t so much the fact that Jim was in his early 90s but,
“How could you, Peter, Jim was gassed at Gallipolli?”
Jim was about the fittest 90 something I had ever met and the effects of a gas attack some 50 years previously did not show at all!
At Lincoln Rugby Club in 1990, the club was about to lose players. Iraq had invaded Kuwait and the air force bases in our area supplied our club with rugby players. I saw the changes in their demeanours as they realised that they were very soon going to find themselves at war. Nobody wants to go to war less than the men and women who are going to have to fight it. My team mates were obviously scared.
I have just finished reading Victor Hugo’s epic novel “Les Miserables”, of course now the musical is more famous. I have been lucky enough to see the play and the TV version thereof. But, Dear Reader, as is often the case, nothing can compare to the book. I was at the Battle of Waterloo through his magnificent description. I was standing on the barriers during the riots of 1832. And I was escaping through the sewers with an unconscious Marius on Valjean’s back. Victor Hugo was more than an author and poet, he was a statesman who pushed against slavery believing that all mankind was guilty if there was but one slave left on the planet. He also believed in the United States of Europe and that war between Europeans was a civil war. He predicted that the 20th Century would see the end of war. He lived between 1802 and 1885. It is no fault of his that we have not seen an end to war or poverty but, like Charles Dickens, he did not shy away from uncomfortable truths. There was a lump in my throat when I finally finished reading “Les Miserables”.
Spike Milligan was an humorist and raconteur. On his grave stone which my brother, George, stumbled upon recently, he has written in Gaelic, “I told you I was ill”. Before a live audience of celebrities in London, he recounted one of his war stories. Late in the war his troop stumbled on a squadron of what they thought were American soldiers. They moved into the open only to discover that they were wrong when some German paratroopers opened up on them, causing them to duck hastily. One of that German troop matched the date and day and information on troop movements and many years after the war contacted Spike in London. Spike invited him to lunch at which they imbibed and reminisced far into the afternoon. As they parted, his erstwhile enemy asked if he could sign Spike’s menu. On it he wrote,
‘Sorry I missed you on February 15th, 1945.”
They departed with chuckles and smiles and Spike asked him to stand up after he told this story because he invited him to be a part of his audience. This is a war story which I have enjoyed reading.
It only takes one man’s ego to throw the world into a maelstrom of hurt. And we know by watching the evening news that always, always it is the civilian population which suffers most in a war, ‘twas ever thus. So, Dear Reader, Davidson may grumble inwardly at getting his act together to pay respect to those who have seen what he would not want to see and to those who have done what he would not want to have done. But there is reason enough in a movement of my head to the left of my computer where sits a photograph of a young man in his RAF uniform at 20 years of age. All of his life is before him, except that it is not. He has an energetic, joyous smile on his face as you can see in the photograph at the head of this blog. The epitaph on his grave reads as follows:-
“To have lost him is grievous but to have had him is great gain that abides.”
That is all I need to get myself to the cenotaph.
Flying Officer Billy Davidson did not reach his coming of age, he was killed nearly 80 years ago before his 21st birthday.
Lest we forget.
Enjoyed this Pete.
Have you read Jonathan’s latest book? Lots for you and others to discuss/ comment on!
‘On Canadian Democracy’
Thanks Petrina. I knew that Jonathan’s latest was coming out. I will trek up to Edgemont this week and see if it is in ’32 Books’ and if not will order it from there. Isn’t it good to celebrate Labour Day without having to ‘labour’ tomorrow!!
Made me think.
Good to read . Thank you x
Thanks Peggy.
One problem with Lytton being rebuilt is a reflection of how expanded building codes have increased the costs of building in our province. Shelter is a fundamental need and yet nothing is being fast tracked to help either the people of Lytton or others in the province. It is time for action to address homelessness and to get Lytton back on its feet.