Remember Remember the Eleventh of November. Yes, I know the correct number is the Fifth (Guy Fawkes Day) – but it’s the Eleventh I need to make real for myself every year, lest I forget.
Here is my observation for this year…
My son Tom and friend Brian – ages 26 and 27 – went to Cuba for a holiday. Being lads in their twenties, they quickly got tired of all the food and drinks and swimming and leisure… They rented two motorcycles.
Being lads in their twenties they quickly got tired of staying within the compound area and “went out on the highway, looking for adventure.” They got it. Brian wiped out, turning in to a café.
Immediately a flock of Cubans came to his rescue – making sure he was ok, righting the bike, washing out his wounds and making an offer of marriage. OK, it was just one young woman who jokingly made the offer. Brian was soon “right as rain” but the same could not be said for the motorbike.
Tommy could speak a few words of Spanish and was able to piece together the location of a mechanic. A few minutes and only $14 later, the bike was “good to go.” The mechanic did not think the same of Brian and insisted on cleaning out his lacerations with a special soap.
It stung, Brian flinched. The grease-covered nurse chided him, “Está usted un ‘man-o’?!” Brian decided that “Si” was the best response and got through the treatment – which incidentally worked wonders. Brian and Tom and bikes returned to “base” in good repair and spirits.
*****
Now, let’s go back about 66 years ago to World War Two Europe. What do you think are the chances of two Canadian soldiers wanting more excitement then they already had? And what would have happened to them if they had rolled a bike in enemy territory.
My step-father, Cecil, can give you the answer to that. It’s written up in the book “Guests of the Nazis” and he lived it - in a prisoner of war camp. Hunger, lack of medical care, little food, lots of vermin. And they – being Allies - were the lucky ones.
The treatment of the Russian soldiers in a parallel camp? I cannot bring myself to write it down – I cannot imagine seeing and hearing it. And seeing and smelling the survivors at the liberation of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp?
One of Cecil’s wartime friends committed suicide on returning to England. Many in my stepfather’s camp had complete nervous breakdowns or “shell-shock.” Now we call it “post-traumatic stress syndrome” – but it all means the same thing. We can never fully recover from seeing what Cecil calls “Man’s inhumanity to man.”
That is what we need to remember - man’s inhumanity to man. We are good at remembering the best of humankind. The evil, we want to forget. To sweep it into the jaws of hell where it belongs. Except the mouth of hell never closes. It is always there - spreading gossip, treating a group of people worse than slaves, making money on bunker-busters, and withholding the necessities of life.
The rallying cry of “War Amps” is “Never again!” and I encourage you to watch their 5 minute film on youtube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcdJVAUyvzc . “Vaya con la paz,” my little Tommies, “ Vaya con la paz.”
