Benefit of hindsight

“Newspapers and television have been dominated recently by commemorations of the First World War, particularly the Battle of the Somme,” writes a Craigie regular.

“There was – and still is – a lot of comment on the war from the point of view of today’s descendants interpreting events and attitudes of the time with the benefit of hindsight and with the very different approach to patriotism and duty now prevalent in today’s Britain.

“The war is depicted as a useless sacrifice of young lives with lions led by donkeys and so forth, but, when I was a boy, I could not persuade veterans, my father included, to talk about the conflict. It was all too horribly fresh in their memories, I think, and they wanted to forget it.

“One impression I did get from what Dad and other veterans said was that they were not forced to fight. Most of them were volunteers and went to war convinced that, if they did not, Britain, Europe and perhaps the world would be subject to a German-led tyranny, with freedom and democracy a thing of the past.

“There was no whingeing then about being treated as cannon-fodder or any of the other complaints now voiced in television documentaries. Perhaps the veterans quoted in the last 30 years or so were pessimistic and bitter because they were old men who had forgotten what they felt like when they first went to war.

“I am not sure my father would have recognised himself and his army mates in many of the old men who appeared in television interviews broadcast in recent years. His was a straightforward approach to patriotism and duty, uncomplicated by thoughts of ‘us’ and ‘them’ , Scottish and English or any other petty consideration.”