Old need dignity, not patronising
Dialogue Fuss made over ‘D-Day rascal’ another example of how today’s society views elderly, writes
Ah, bless. A man of 89 has walked out of a care home, and then taken a train and a ferry, all by himself. He has attended a public event in France without becoming the slightest bit confused. After posing for photographs — some of them with young women, the saucy old boy — he has returned to England to face the press.
It is fair to say that Bernard Jordan had a very good D-Day. His walkabout knocked the 70th anniversary of the key moment in a great global conflict — one that changed the course of history and cost thousands of lives — off the front page of many British newspapers. The other veterans who attended the memorial, not to mention world leaders including the President of the United States, became back-stories to his trip across the Channel. It was Bernard’s incredible adventure that mattered.
Described in the press as ‘‘the great escape’’ — a crass, unblushing reference to the breakout from Stalag Luft III in 1944, which itself cost 50 lives — his journey was widely reported to have captured the heart of a nation. Here was a man who still represented the spirit of a great generation, we were told. He was our own ‘‘D-Day rascal’’.
Congratulations to Bernard Jordan; commiserations to the half-baked culture that accepts this kind of trivia as worthy of serious attention. The moral seems to be that the great and moving events of the past are best conveyed to those who were not there by a gurgling, sentimental story from everyday domestic life.
I suspect that many of those who actually fought in the war will have been annoyed that such an important anniversary could be reduced to this level of triviality, and surprised that a connection could be made between their courage all those years ago and a small act of bloody-minded individualism in 2014.
An odd contemporary prejudice is revealed by the coverage the story received. It seems that anyone who has