The End of the War, The End of a Life
Against Cynicism
Today marks V-J Day and the end of the Second World War. Last Thursday was the 79th anniversary of my uncle’s death in that war, in France. I posted an earlier letter Norman wrote to his parents here, which strikes me in its lack of cynicism, not just about the world and the war, but about family and sacrifice. I grew up surrounded by a good deal of cynicism and contempt and it is not a good way to be. Much of my adult life has been a battle (often uphill) against that influence. So my uncle’s moral clarity is something I find admirable, aspirational - though one could argue that, when the enemy is Hitler, moral clarity is easy to locate. Still, my uncle could have stayed in law school and married his fiancée, and in tribute to his choices, I’d like to post his last letter to his mother.
“2 Aug 44
Dear Mum:
Here I am with another letter after quite a gap in time, but things have been so busy I haven’t had an awful lot of time, and am now sitting in a little hole waiting and listening to the gunfire. War is hell, believe me, and I don’t like it very much.
There’s not an awful lot of news—apart from a little cold I am quite well to date.
Don’t worry about me, please folks; everything is in the hands of God. I’ll be as careful as I can be, and write as often as possible—not very often, I guess, but you’ll be notified if anything happens to me.
Please don’t worry.
Norm”
On the day he died, at Hill 195 - on one visit to Normandy, I had a wonderful French cab driver recount to me better than any historian could have what happened there - he was, of course, not alone. I was lucky in the 1990s and onward to have spent time with Owen Lockyer, a soldier who was injured there that day, and to have introduced him to my parents. There was a young man named Glen Fishbach, from St. Thomas, Ontario, who died that day, too (among others). I did a bit of research and found he left a wife and young son - this bit of information gave me a particular pang. And more died or were taken prisoner.
[Bretteville-sur-Laize Canadian War Cemetery, Normandy, France. My uncle and the aforementioned Glen Fishbach, along with 3000 others, are buried there. Photo: Rondi Adamson, 2018]
One of my favourite war poems (really, an anti-war poem) is Wilfred Owen’s Strange Meeting. It tells the story of two soldiers from opposing sides meeting in the afterlife: specifically, in Hell. This is the poem from which came the phrase “the pity of war,” and if you are in the market for an excellent book about the First World War, here is one with that very title. (I don’t think I agree with all of Ferguson’s conclusions, but he is brilliant and always worth your time).
I am the enemy you killed, my friend.
I knew you in this dark: for so you frowned
Yesterday through me as you jabbed and killed.
I parried; but my hands were loath and cold.
Let us sleep now. . . .
To me, this poem is another blow against cynicism. Owen is asking us to see the enemy as our reflection, as a potential friend. Indeed, in some of the interviews used during the television version of Band of Brothers, the American soldiers comment on how, in another life, another circumstance, those young German men may have had things in common with them and could have been their buddies. My uncle also wrote poetry (he was active in the Acta Victoriana, as was my mother) and there were a handful of his poems included in the bundles of letters my mother and aunt had hidden away (which I did not see until after their deaths, six weeks apart). Here is one, though it is unclear to me when exactly it was written:
WEARINESS
How can he die, who’s never seen life
Whose year is but an endless chain of days
Whose course in time has always been
The wandering in an endless maze?
And more, for him hath never shone a light
To lead him through the flagrant dark
A smile to make the path before him bright
To make his heart soar like a lark.
To him can never come an end
To part him from the weary world.
Already do his mind and body bend
Whither his soul has aye been hurled.
O! Come then Death
And bring what change there be.
Take my body from this spot
But let my soul be free.
When I write about his refreshing lack of cynicism, I do not mean that my uncle was naive or sentimental. In fact, his letters reveal the opposite - wit and edge - and my talks with Lockyer, among others, tell of someone who had little patience with silly hierarchies and unnecessary formalities. When I refer to a lack of cynicism I mean that he knew there were things for which it was worth fighting, and even dying. He was realistic about what needed to be done and knew the risk. As he wrote to my grandparents: “As for the war, I might as well say a few words on that, too. I couldn’t very well stay out of the army – I had to help somehow. If people are being bullied by someone, any decent person would take a hand trying to stop him. And joining the army means taking the risks involved, so though I’m afraid at times, I pray I’ll be brave enough to do my share.”
I don’t know if I would be, but one take on things I hate is the, “You can’t judge someone’s cowardly decision because you don’t know what you would do in that circumstance.” True, and there are situations where we ought not criticize someone’s inaction or choice, but it also suggests that the default position for humans is cowardice. Is it? I need to believe otherwise and I’m glad there are those who put the lie to that default setting. I hope there will continue to be.
***
August 15th in history: end of the war in 1945, Indian Independence in 1947, Assumption of Mary (a long time ago), birth of Napoleon in 1769. And yet, when I googled “famous August 15 birthdays” the first the system coughed up was Jennifer Lawrence. Sheesh. We’re going to heck on a handcart, folks. (Also, a quick note about V-J Day: I wrote a thing about it here, at my other site.)