When is it time to purge war memorabilia?
Some people are hoarders; others are purgers. Put me down as a mild case of the former affliction, although the more appropriate term should be “collector” or, even better, “archivist” or “curator.”
This summer, needing to clear some space in the basement for a home improvement job, I culled from the “collection” my father’s rotting fishing bag and a box of sleeping bags, likewise decomposing.
There are, however, some items of absolutely no value but sentimental that I could never bear to part with. One is my dad’s little RCAF duffel bag, neatly labelled with his military ID and hometown, which I’ve hung on a wall in the attic office. It carried some of the clothes pop wore during the war.
Many of the sons and daughters of war veterans are probably in the same boat as we are, compelled to take a hard look at the things accumulated over the years, handed down from parents who have passed on or nearing the end of life.
Each one of these items, from an air force cap, to a box of service medals, to letters from home are such intimate connections with the times our parents lived through, a personal testament to the increasingly unimaginable sacrifice and struggle of the Second World War.. (In my dad’s family, three of the four brothers enlisted; the youngest, to his lasting regret, was not of eligible age).
So it was not great timing, as I’m gradually trying to shed nominally precious mementoes, that an item presumed long lost comes back into my possession.
For the life of me I cannot remember where or when I picked up a British army helmet, maybe a roadside junk sale somewhere. Such items were pretty common as thousands of veterans, now getting on with post-war life, got rid of physical reminders of their time in the military.
I know it was probably in my late teens because I know I used it as a motorcycle helmet when buddies with a bike took me for a ride. I recall thinking while ripping around dangerously on a motorcycle how completely inadequate the “tin hat” would have been in the event of a road collision, and, more chillingly, how little protection from Nazi bullets or other deadly shrapnel it would have afforded the people who wore it.
It had been so long since I had seen the helmet I was stunned to note when my sister handed it back to me this summer it had writing on it, some particularly significant markings in light of the buzz around the summer box-office blockbuster from director Christopher Nolan (and, we should add, this week’s 75th anniversary of the Dieppe raid).
In remarkably clear letters made with some kind of white marker, is written on the helmet’s rim: Dunkirk, May, 1940. On the top of the helmet one reads: Bboy, 7th Batt. R.T.C. There are four names inscribed on the helmet, although only two - J. Chapman and B. Holliday - are legible.
A quick internet search reveals R.T.C. stands for Royal Tank Corps, which, as of 1939, was renamed the Royal Tank Regiment. Sir Winston Churchill and Field Marshall Bernard Montgomery both chose to associate themselves with the regiment at the outset of the war. “Bboy” remains a mystery.
The 7th Battalion, along with the 4th, was indeed involved in the Dunkirk operation. According to one account, the tank units slowed the advance of General Erwin Rommel’s Panzer Division near Arras, France and “forced the Germans to regroup and rethink their supply lines before continuing on in their push towards the encircled Allies at Dunkerque.” Another report adds “both regiments suffered heavily in the end and the survivors escaped via Dunkirk.”
So, many years after picking up a helmet as an ironic curiosity in an era of intense anti-war sentiment, this piece of military memorabilia has renewed significance as our living links with the Second World War fade away.
Christopher Nolan has done his bit to perpetuate the memory of such stupendously dramatic times; I think I’ll “curate” my Dunkirk helmet for a while yet, and pass it on in the hopes the next generation will have a tangible reminder of such grim and glorious times.