My father fought in Greece, Tripoli and Egypt and he wrote a lot of letters describing his experience. I have them stored in boxes and have started collating them into a story. I started with Burnham Military camp and reading the letters I got a sense of how a boys own adventure turned into a horror story during their first major and flawed engagement in Greece. The descriptions are stark, laced with a wry humour that overlays the terror. We had planned to retrace his steps starting in Northern Greece last year until covid changed everyone's plans. We still hope to do that, in the meantime I am continuing his journey via letters written all those years ago. For me it's like watching A World at War, only this is more personal.
So did my father. And Crete. He was too young to go, so did what a lot of them did - put his age up to the legal age for soldiers. Off to the big adventure!! Off for some excitement; the opposite of life in NZ!!
Perhaps, like 'The World at War', it focuses on people a documentary I stumbled upon (TV1 daytime ANZAC Day) decades ago made an unforgettable impression. 'A Game of Ghosts' interviews some of the last surviving British WW1 Veterans. One tells a story of five soldiers, four who died and how living (an apparently happy life) meant dealing with the burden of surviving.
Some of the audio features in 'The Ballard of Bill Hubbard', the opening track of Roger Waters 'Amused to Death' album
Death. When you get past the bravado of of war, thinking quietly deeply as you can about mortality triggered maybe by watching a war doco it will stir feelings of compassion/empathy for the fate of those who suffered thru it. It makes you more human to always remember death not that far away. It can possibly make you a better person, unless you're a cold hearted psychopath and those seem to be on the rise again JMO. We think about death more than we like to admit.
What a day. You dropped me into Passchendaele, and that ten year old Palestinian girl told us of the futility and tragedy of it all. Again and again and again and again.
I grew up watching that series with my Dad on cold winter weekend afternoons. It was always about the people. Those faces. Be it cheeky soldiers grinning at the lens or the faces of people surrounded by destruction. Always about them. The harrowing episode when the allies got to the concentration camps. Images that have never left me. People reduced to things, to parts. The incomprehensibly large mountain of spectacles & what that represented. What people went through, what people saw during the war, what still happens today around the world. The evil in the notion of 'us' & 'them' 😪
Virtually all middle-aged white guys become "experts" in WW2 history at some stage in their lives.
Which nerdily brings me to a small correction in your Midway story...
My understanding is that the Japanese carriers were found by a *dive-bomber* flight that was well off-course and almost at the very limit of their fuel endurance. They spotted the wake of a destroyer heading back to the Japanese fleet after it had fallen behind trying to depth-charge a US submarine that was also trailing the enemy ships.
Serendipity can often determine victory.
After their successful attack, the aircraft from the remaining operational Japanese carrier then followed THEM back to the US Fleet and severely damaged the Yorktown.
The World at War was compulsory viewing at our house when I was a young fella.
My grandfather was in the NZ Division and lost an eye to a shell splinter in battle and was invalided out.
My father was too young to go, but he was keen...
The cold hard casualty statistics always gets me. Millions of people whose life stories just come to an abrupt end. Often just due to complete random chance. Wrong place, wrong time. Dead. Enemy action. Friendly fire. Training accident. Random cruelty. Disease. Starvation. Still dead.
Rinse and repeat 20 million times.
How anyone coped is just beyond me in my middle-class, comfortable, peaceful, 21st century suburban life.
Wonderful piece. One of my all time favourite quotes, applicable today; was by Marshal Zhukov, then a General, one of the defenders at Stalingrad. When criticism of that battle began to trickle back from Moscow...a long way away, his response was glorious; "Those who were not there are wrong". In our current world of "keyboard experts", it sits well as the the only necessary response.
My father fought in Greece, Tripoli and Egypt and he wrote a lot of letters describing his experience. I have them stored in boxes and have started collating them into a story. I started with Burnham Military camp and reading the letters I got a sense of how a boys own adventure turned into a horror story during their first major and flawed engagement in Greece. The descriptions are stark, laced with a wry humour that overlays the terror. We had planned to retrace his steps starting in Northern Greece last year until covid changed everyone's plans. We still hope to do that, in the meantime I am continuing his journey via letters written all those years ago. For me it's like watching A World at War, only this is more personal.
So did my father. And Crete. He was too young to go, so did what a lot of them did - put his age up to the legal age for soldiers. Off to the big adventure!! Off for some excitement; the opposite of life in NZ!!
Perhaps, like 'The World at War', it focuses on people a documentary I stumbled upon (TV1 daytime ANZAC Day) decades ago made an unforgettable impression. 'A Game of Ghosts' interviews some of the last surviving British WW1 Veterans. One tells a story of five soldiers, four who died and how living (an apparently happy life) meant dealing with the burden of surviving.
Some of the audio features in 'The Ballard of Bill Hubbard', the opening track of Roger Waters 'Amused to Death' album
The doco is on YouTube https://youtu.be/EviSiRh-_74
Death. When you get past the bravado of of war, thinking quietly deeply as you can about mortality triggered maybe by watching a war doco it will stir feelings of compassion/empathy for the fate of those who suffered thru it. It makes you more human to always remember death not that far away. It can possibly make you a better person, unless you're a cold hearted psychopath and those seem to be on the rise again JMO. We think about death more than we like to admit.
There is an excellent book about the battle of Midway, based on Japanese sources - Shattered Sword, by Johathan Parshall and Anthony Tully.
What a day. You dropped me into Passchendaele, and that ten year old Palestinian girl told us of the futility and tragedy of it all. Again and again and again and again.
I grew up watching that series with my Dad on cold winter weekend afternoons. It was always about the people. Those faces. Be it cheeky soldiers grinning at the lens or the faces of people surrounded by destruction. Always about them. The harrowing episode when the allies got to the concentration camps. Images that have never left me. People reduced to things, to parts. The incomprehensibly large mountain of spectacles & what that represented. What people went through, what people saw during the war, what still happens today around the world. The evil in the notion of 'us' & 'them' 😪
Virtually all middle-aged white guys become "experts" in WW2 history at some stage in their lives.
Which nerdily brings me to a small correction in your Midway story...
My understanding is that the Japanese carriers were found by a *dive-bomber* flight that was well off-course and almost at the very limit of their fuel endurance. They spotted the wake of a destroyer heading back to the Japanese fleet after it had fallen behind trying to depth-charge a US submarine that was also trailing the enemy ships.
Serendipity can often determine victory.
After their successful attack, the aircraft from the remaining operational Japanese carrier then followed THEM back to the US Fleet and severely damaged the Yorktown.
The World at War was compulsory viewing at our house when I was a young fella.
My grandfather was in the NZ Division and lost an eye to a shell splinter in battle and was invalided out.
My father was too young to go, but he was keen...
The cold hard casualty statistics always gets me. Millions of people whose life stories just come to an abrupt end. Often just due to complete random chance. Wrong place, wrong time. Dead. Enemy action. Friendly fire. Training accident. Random cruelty. Disease. Starvation. Still dead.
Rinse and repeat 20 million times.
How anyone coped is just beyond me in my middle-class, comfortable, peaceful, 21st century suburban life.
Thank you for such a thoughtful and personal piece. If you haven't discovered the story of the USS Indianapolis, there's a superb documentary about it that you may be able to find and watch: https://www.indystar.com/story/news/2019/01/08/uss-indianapolis-final-chapter-documentary-air-pbs-indiana-history/2511744002/
There's also a movie but it got 9 on Rotten Tomatoes!
Get well soon.
Wonderful piece. One of my all time favourite quotes, applicable today; was by Marshal Zhukov, then a General, one of the defenders at Stalingrad. When criticism of that battle began to trickle back from Moscow...a long way away, his response was glorious; "Those who were not there are wrong". In our current world of "keyboard experts", it sits well as the the only necessary response.
A sobering read for a lovely day, David. Stay well.