I have just been watching on TV one of the wartime 'greats'. One of those films we eagerly queued to see in days when the darkness of the cinema and the story unfolding on the screen before our eyes brought a certain rest and relief from our humdrum daily chores, perhaps stimulated or inspired so that we walked home feeling uplifted and sort of detached. "The Way to the Stars" was about the Royal Air Force in 1940, blending into 1942 and on, when the 8th U.S.A.F. began filling the skies with B-17 Flying Fortresses, but more to the point, it was about a time which will always remain clear in the memories of people of my age when many far more recent events fade from the memory. Its stars were well-known British faces, some still with us today - John Mills, Michael Redgrave, Trevor Howard, Basil Radford, Rosamund Johns, Renee Asherton, and a host of smallpart players who we know well by sight but can't remember their names. That was nostalgic enough in its way, but what really struck home - inspiring me to come straight up here and write this - was the atmosphere, the clipped 'throw-away style of talking, the 'here-today-gone-tomorrow' relationships that we all knew so well. We lived in that world for many years, a world of `Hello's and Goodbyes', of not knowing whether you would see someone again, and accepting it without fuss or drama, and the tight bonds of comradeship forged in the flames of adversity that made it all possible to bear.
It was an education that transcended that of the greatest school or college, a lesson that put steel into the backbone and made much better men of us than we would ever have turned out to be had we merely played out our roles in a world like that of today. They've missed something, those people who were born too late to be part of what we knew, when all our aims were targeted on winning a war and lapsing back into a steady and risk-free existence. Or so we thought, because few of us ever realized that things would never be the same again, that we were going to live out the rest of our lives with an `edge', an advantage denied to the rest. I am sure we consider, handle, and view dramatic events with greater equanimity and a sense of balance than does the majority of the community, panicked into false and hasty verdicts by the alarmist bleating of the media which transforms ALL happenings into world-shaking drama. An air crash, an earthquake, the tragedy of violent death - all make the headlines on the TV screen, but the next day when no events of equal gravity occur, the small and insignificant items become inflated into the same level epoch-shaking views, and the public has lost the art of differentiating and placing the correct stress on these varied events.
In wartime - in `our' war - we had survival as our prime aim, and we adjusted and acted to that end; today it is not beyond the bounds of reason to say that the Great British Public hasn't really got anything SERIOUS to worry about, so they make a fuss about whatever new scare can be thought up. It might be a story that eggs are poisonous - despite all of us eating eggs (and craving for them in wartime) and still remaining hale and hearty; or some environmental scare that makes us scared to push the button on a can of spray paint; this week some item of diet causes heart disease, next week they discover it doesn't really but instead it is good for us - there is no end to it. But those of us who have had bigger things to occupy our minds, far greater threats thrust before us, we tend to take all this with a pinch of salt, to display a certain disdain, and a refusal to take it really seriously. This infuriates the majority of those around us who firmly believe that we are in our dotage, and that we cannot care for our own futures let alone those of the world around us. The reputation we acquire for being callous and uncaring is not recognized by our critics as an armor, just as our humor passes their understanding.
We know, we veterans of cynical Army humor, that laughing at the bad things is perhaps the best way of handling them - like the WWI tale "Where's George? - he's ganging out there on the old barbed wire!" Some of the quips tossed perfunctorily off the lips appall the more nurtured among us, but as I get older and wrestle desperately against lessening years and mortality in general, I find a certain macabre comfort in making jokes about it - which doesn't find favor with my dear wife, who feels it is no matter for humor.
I suppose all this could be said to constitute the views of an elderly man, whose ideas are those of past generations, whose sense of values has been eroded and derided, to be replaced by far inferior standards. However, time marches on, and throughout history older people have probably had their moans about changes and vanished ideals, and we are entitled to ours in the knowledge that many an unpleasant Service duty was made tolerable after we had had our `moan' about it!
Back to MWAN # 132 Table of Contents
Back to MWAN List of Issues
Back to MagWeb Magazine List
© Copyright 2004 Legio X
This article appears in MagWeb.com (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web.
Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com