From Oliver family archive
I might be full of cold but
that wasn’t going to stop me from putting on Granddad Eddie’s RAF pins and
attending the Remembrance Day service at Victoria Embankment this morning, as I’m
sure my granddad and his mates were never given the opportunity to ring in sick
from fighting in the Second World War. After a week of terrible weather it was
nice to not have to worry about going out in the rain with my cold, another
simple luxury that wasn’t afforded my granddad or indeed anyone involved in protecting
this country. It’s those little things that make you think.
Mandi, now fully in receipt of
my cold, didn’t come with me because she wasn’t well enough. I think this
proves that men are indeed the stronger sex, and with that the ridiculous ‘man-flu’
myth must now be consigned to the politically incorrect dustbin of time. Just as
my generation can’t believe that sitcom characters were allowed to say racist
and sexist things on prime time television, future generations will gasp at the
very idea of taking the piss out of men for being ill and be thankful that the
sexes from this day forward will have equal rights. It’s been a tough fight for
equality but I’m proud to have done my bit.
After the service I treated
myself to a cup of tea at the little kiosk (1.50 but hey, I’m doing all right
these days so if this seems elaborate then sorry to rub your face in it) and
sat at a table with an old couple who had made the journey. The husband clocked
my RAF pins and struck up a conversation about the services and sacrifices made
by dads and granddads (brothers and sons too I suppose, as the oldest child in
my family I hadn’t really thought about it that way before). This couple was
born during the war and one startling fact of life is that the wife said that
she only saw her father a handful of times before he was killed in the line of
duty. This was just accepted as a bit of an inconvenience in those days, and I wonder
how the lives of people like my granddad would have been different if they had
lived by today’s sensitivities. Men didn’t cry back then, men didn’t discuss
their feelings, men didn’t talk to professionals about the shit that was
swirling around in their heads. My granddad bottled up all this for years and
spent the rest of his civilian life with a coiled spring of emotion and
resentment inside him. What if he had received counseling after the war? He
might still be alive today, in his 90s and although he wouldn’t be ‘fixed’ he
might at least have been able to find peace within himself at what he did for
his country. Hating the Germans because he was a prisoner of war wasn’t thought
of as the wrong attitude to his generation, but I’m sure you could ask any
German man his age and they would have exactly the same emotional demons as he
did. The war took away a lot from him, but it robbed me at the age of eight of
a man I loved dearly but never properly got to know.
From Oliver family archive
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