When the past rings true
Rural Ramblings By Ian McInnes
I admit it. I’m a fan of old movies. Maybe it’s because I’m getting up there myself but I don’t think so. I watched a good chunk of the Oscar winning WWII English family drama Mrs. Miniver recently. Yes, it’s an American movie and yes, I took it has propogandist but some elements of it ring horribly true, especially the bombing and some of my memories came flooding back about stories my parents and grandparents told and the similarity with what’s going on in the world now and not just in Ukcraine.
My father was an aircraft engineer and during WWII not allowed to sign up. He did, however, join the Home Guard in which he was a platoon sergeant. My mother and father met each other working for the Bristol Aeroplane Company in Filton in Bristol, which was later bought by Rolls Royce before becoming the British Aircraft Corp. (BAC). In later years my father worked as a design engineer on Concorde. But, getting back to my theme. I remember my parents talking about air raids and taking shelter under the stairs, the sirens, the places that were hit and in particular my mother telling of coming out from work with her colleagues one day to head home and being strafed by German fighters, that’s Mrs. Miniver and then some. I remember as a kid playing on bomb sites.
My grandmother took shelter under the stairs when air raids were one sometimes with my grandfather (a WWI veteran) when he wasn’t out doing his job as an air raid warden. Their house was almost at the top of a hill and my grandmother told me there was an anti aircraft battery at the bottom of it. Thier house was never hit by a bomb but an ill aimed antiaircraft shell did come through their roof. It didn’t go off, was disarmed and my grandparents used it as a door stop, I remember it well.
Wars are horrible and often fought for all the wrong reasons or sometimes as they drag on, just perpetuated by ongoing hatred and greed. WWII was different. It was, I believe, a case of having to fight for everything and everyone you believed in against enemies that were set on taking everything you had or would have. I’m sorry to say it but I’m seeing the same thing happening all over again in some countries encouraged and whipped up by leaders that should know better and stifle the truth.
With the risk of a nuclear war ever greater is it right to fight to the last Ukrainian? It doesn’t feel like it but is it the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one? Or should we cross the line and the hell with the consequences to do the right thing? It’s a deadly game of poker. There are some difficult decisions ahead.