It’s been said that Britain is a country overburdened by history. I’m not very sure what ‘overburdened’ means in that context. But my guess is that, for my generation born seventy-odd years ago, it refers to the enduring damage wreaked by The First World War.
I remember, as a child, asking my mother why there were so few families with children in our street. She itemised the houses. So many of them were occupied by old ladies on their own, widows and spinsters. I already knew why Mr Morton, next door, cycled back and forth to his allotment steering with one arm: the other arm had been left behind many years ago on The Western Front. I also knew how many brothers Mrs Morton, his wife, had lost in the same war. And that Mrs Morton’s mother’s hair had turned white after she heard that her youngest son was also missing in action.
I had two grandads. One lived three doors up the street. The other lived across town and was frequently unwell, having been near-fatally gassed in that war. When he died in 1958, the GP recorded the underlying cause of death as ‘WWI gas poisoning.’ He’d gone to war, leaving behind four young children and a pregnant wife. He was a joiner to trade, building coffins for the Co-op; they were good employers, and kept his job open when he was frequently off sick. But there was no sick pay back then. My dad had to leave school at fourteen, though his headteacher came to the house to plead with my granny to keep him at school, promising a bright future for him. She was apologetic, but she explained how badly she would need my dad’s wages.
There were an awful, awful lot of deaths (886,000 British forces were killed) and an awful, awful lot of wounded (one and a half million), And there were an awful, awful lot of widows and spinsters, impoverished families, and so on, who were collateral damage. Plus all the other casualties from all the other nations: you have to wonder what the families from the other side of the world made of it all, like the families of the 336 New Zealand Maoris who died.
Of course, WWII, which ended only two years before my birth, had caused casualties and damage aplenty. And it brought new horrors: the Gas Chambers and the Atom Bomb. It brought not just the millions of military and innocent civilian deaths, but the bomb sites we played on, the following years of rationing and economic austerity, and so on. But we were told that those casualties and the terrible damage were an unavoidable sacrifice in a worthy cause – the defeat of evil fascism.
Not doubt, if I’d been brought up in Japan say, or Poland, I’d think WWII brought the greater grief. But for me and my friends and family, I reckon that WWI, though more remote, seemed a much greater burden to bear. And that’s surely the case because, unlike WWII, no-one seems to know what caused WWI. And no-one seems to know what it achieved.
How could it have achieved anything at all, if my dad had to go to WWII, a mere 21 years after WWI finished?
As Dylan sang:
“The First World War, boys, it came and it went,
The reason for fightin’ I never did get…”
That’s why WWI feels like an overburden: it was a cruel, cruel futility.
Image: A Pot-pourri of dried leaves, petals and berries in pink, yellow, bronze and brown from Pixabay.com
literally stories 
Mick
Truly remarkable. In America we’d need three wars to reduce the population to the point anyone would notice. But in smaller European nations such must have been (and still is) keenly felt. Wonderful, restrained language gets this one across beautifully. Many other writers would shriek and drown the point out.
Leila
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Thanks for commenting, Leila. And thanks for publishing. The centenary of WWI has come and gone, but surely rely it remains important to recall the futility of all that senseless slaughter. bw mick
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Hi Mick
You are welcome. It is vitally important to keep such hard memories alive. We are not a species that learns well from our biggest mistakes. Thursday marks 24 years since 9-11 and yet cell phones have changed more since then than have politics.
But it is wortg fughting for, regardless.
Leila
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Mick
This brings home the cost of war in any time and any place by focusing on one specific place, the one you know best.
That’s a brilliant combination.
The advice to “Write what you know” is TRUE (if one wishes to be authentic) and you know history and your own land very, very well!
Also LOVE the Dylan quote in this, a brilliant use of brilliant words from a brilliant song and a brilliant prophet of the word, Robert Zimmerman.
Dale
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Thanks, Dale. Glad you liked it. When I got back yesterday, read your last piece: it was a pleasure! bw mick
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Mick
This was a great piece because it was personalized and humanized. Numbers are so absolute but hard to relate to. I lost friends in the Trade Center. For me as a human, there might as well have been 4 killed as 3,000. I read last week that a half a million Mexicans were murdered since 2012 by the drug cartels. It’s too horrific and mathematical to relate to. But, I can tell you a story about Johnny Crowe who died on 9/11.
Very powerful! — gerry
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Thanks, Gerry. You’re dead right: personalising tragedy helps to get it across. And perhaps we owe it to Johnny Crowe, Grandad Bloor, Mr & Mrs Morton & co. to recall deaths and sufferings. bw mick
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Thanks for sharing this with us, Michael. Horrible times. Horrible memories. Excellent essay.
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Thanks, David. I always appreciate your comments. bw mick
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Michael since I was born two years before the end of WWII (but have no memory thereof), I guess I’m two years older, but remember little of the aftermath. My parents generation was among the older that went off to war, but I was fortunate that my father worked in defense (after his machinist job “went off to war”) and was not drafted.
It is impossible for me to grasp the carnage, but you portray it well. I read “In The Garden Of The Beast” by Larsson(?) about the situation that led to the war. I kept saying to myself – you can stop the war. Prevent Germany’s war machine before it’s too late.
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Thanks, Doug. You touch on the difficulty of preventing the slaughter. Fifty-odd years ago, I met a guy called Satish Kumar, a Jain monk who walked 8,000 miles from New Dehli to Moscow, Paris, London and Washington to campaign for nuclear disarmament. He still working at it, aged 89. But not all of us are of the wood of which saints and martyrs are carved. bw mick
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This is highly thought-provoking, personal and deep writing. I don’t want to ladle on praise about your superb writing style, as I fear it would belittle the purpose, but you are a masterful writer.
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Thanks, Paul. I always appreciate your comments. with best wishes, mick
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Hi Mick,
I reckon you changed your style here. This was more clinical than you normally write. That isn’t a criticism by the way, you judged the style perfectly and was as cold as the figures (If that makes any sense.)
I love this line and by fuck anyone could spend ten thousand words even trying to skim the top of what this means. I reckon the idea of ‘The British Empire’ has a lot to answer to. I wonder if that was what Lucas was going for?!?!!
It’s been said that Britain is a country overburdened by history
This is as good as you’ve written Mick!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Hugh
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Thanks, Hugh, both for commenting and for publishing it. I really am very appreciative. best wishes, mick.
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A clear article about a time we need to remember especially now. In England, the Spanish Flu killed more than World War 1. My Great Great Uncle died of it. My Grandfather was in the WW1 trenches at age 18, at Falaise, etc. they gave the men whiskey for courage and he became an alcoholic, dying of liver disease at age 50. He also went through a divorce and was excommunicated from the Catholic Church and dropped from the family will. One thing led to another. Those good old days were not so good.
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