Before beginning a couple of months of summer sabbatical I’d like to share links to two videos. When I return in the fall I’ll move them to a story which I posted eight years ago but, for now, I’ll highlight them here as a way of thanking a lovely Dutch family for what they do to preserve an important legacy.
In November 2018 I posted “Thoughts for Remembrance Day” describing by father’s Second World War experience of being shot down over Holland, capture by occupying troops, and spending the next five years as a prisoner of war in Germany. I also told the story of how, many years later, I visited a family who care for the graves of his two crew-mates who didn’t survive. We have remained in touch, and each year they share pictures or videos from the Dutch Remembrance Day in May.
This year, Wim Begthel has shared two videos and given permission to include the links on this website. One is a two-minute video of laying flowers on the graves. The other is a 4-½ minute video of Dad’s story, which even includes a couple of photos of aircraft in which I know Dad was inside when they were taken. The commentary is in Dutch but the pictures are self-explanatory.
I’ve been reflecting on a photo of the 1940 graveside ceremony. In those early days of the war, before the descent into brutality over the next five years, there was still a general respect for Geneva Conventions and treating fallen enemy with suitable honours. Five of those standing at the graveside are Nazi soldiers.
Almost a century later it is depressing to hear the US “Secretary of War” (as distinct from “Defence”), in charge of the world’s biggest and most expensive military, dismissing International Humanitarian Law and the Laws of Armed Conflict as obsolete “rules written by dignified men in mahogany rooms”. He boasts of his combat credentials in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Call me a cynic but, in my experience, the more someone boasts about their wartime exploits, the less combat they are likely to have experienced. Most veterans of violent confrontation who I know tend to stay quiet about it. They also tend to understand that the universal “code of the warrior” is a crucial buffer between them and the inexorable dehumanizing realities of sustained violence.
Fortunately the armed forces of more mature democracies continue to nurture a culture of “warrior’s honour”, distinguishing the profession of arms from a mere body of trained killers. Civilians whose families have actually been exposed to war continue to remind succeeding generations that, as my friend the late Tom Faulkner once observed, “War is an irresistibly corrosive chaos, not a fertile field waiting for someone to cultivate it and bring forth peace.”