Memories of the Great War

Some of my earliest memories are of what life was like for a small child growing daily more conscious of the world in the aftermath of the Great War that began 100 years ago. I was born into a large extended Australian family in 1926, 8 years after the Great War ended; but my earliest memories, which probably date from the summer of 1929-30, include ways in which its impact dominated many conversations and the family home was littered with magazines and illustrated books with graphic pictures of that terrible, suicidal conflict. The family was still mourning the death of "Lidie" (Elias) on the killing fields of Gallipoli in 1915. Lidie had been in the middle of the 10 children in the family and was joined in uniform by his youngest brother; his two oldest brothers were considered too old and had too many family responsibilities to fight. Two of my mother's sisters remained unmarried because their sweethearts were killed in the Great War. On my father's side, several of his uncles fought at Gallipoli and in France. Now, 100 years after it all began with the assassination of the Arch-Duke Ferdinand in Sarajevo, are we supposed to celebrate it or lament its lasting influence on so many aspects of everyone's lives? There's an aspect of the Great War that was never talked about in my Australian family; the family had German connections, there were cousins who wore field grey German uniforms; perhaps they even shot at each other.  I suppose many Canadian families can say the same. That is just one of the ways the Great War was a suicidal conflict. 

Midsummer

Longest day, shortest night of the year. In Aberdeen, Scotland where I once spent this date, it never got completely dark and the students in the Aberdeen University residence shed their few remaining inhibitions, along with whatever the men usually wore under their kilts - at any rate, at least two lads did, as a few of the girls in that co-ed residence disclosed when they flipped the kilts up with a handy mashie-niblick. I remember that brief sojourn very fondly. In Edinburgh about 100 Km south, it was light enough for Wendy to guddle in our garden until about 11 pm the first year we lived there. The result was worth it: we had a wonderful flower and veggie garden in the short Scottish summer.

The Placenta

The bonus for waking at 5 am on Sunday mornings is to listen to one of RTE's documentaries. RTE, the radio and television network of the Republic of Ireland, has excellent documentaries. This morning's was the best I've heard in a long time. It was about the placenta.  Many animals eat their placenta. In the days when I bred dachshunds, my lovely dachshund bitch Helen used to eat hers. 

In Ireland today, there's a vogue for eating them, as pate, grilled with garlic and herbs, and in various other exotic gourmet recipes. It makes very good sense. It replaces iron and other essential elements lost during the copious bleeding that often accompanies childbirth. It seems to replace or supplement other essential nutriments. I found it especially intriguing to hear the anecdotal evidence that postpartum depression is seemingly rare among women who eat their placentas, or rather the placentas of their babies. I hope some brave obstetricians, or traditional birth attendants, will mount a randomized controlled trial to test this anecdotal evidence as rigorously as possible.

D-day + 70

I remember it as if it was yesterday. We all knew it was coming, of course, a land-based assault on what the Nazis called Fortress Europe, Festung Europa, was inevitable. The radio,  the Australian Broadcasting Commission, was tactful and circumspect, but its star reporter, Chester Willmott, was redeployed from North Africa to London, to be on the spot when the great day dawned. I was 15, itching to be involved more directly than as a distant bystander. That feeling got stronger when the first hard news reached us - on June 5, because of the time zone difference we were 10 or 11 hours ahead of GMT. Chester Willmott's broadcasts, like David Halton's for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, were brilliant - literate, full of human interest, no trace of jingoism, tinged with regret that Australian forces were not landing on Normandy beaches along with the Brits, Yanks and Canadians - although they had been prominent, of course, earlier in North Africa. A RAAF squadron was engaged in the air assault. Now, 70 years on, it all looks so different, so peaceful in glorious summer colours, in contrast to the grainy, jerky black and white we saw endlessly on cinema screens. The lined, aged faces of the veterans, now in their 90s or above, tell a different story. Many whose faces I saw on TV today had tears running down their cheeks. I had a hard time controlling my own emotions. All the memories are so fresh. How can we infuse our emotions in the bellicose youngsters who would have us do it all again?