By Mark W. Danielson
Yankees Catcher Yogi Berra once quipped, “You can observe a lot by just watching.” While this is true, you can also learn a lot
from listening and reading. By nature, authors
are a curious sort who may be more inclined to watch, listen, and learn, but
book worms are in a league all their own.
These are the people I am addressing today, for they yearn to glimpse
into the other people’s lives to understand history. Today I am sharing a treasured recollection
from a dear friend who grew up in England at a time of world war when civilian
casualties were the norm. It was a time
when no one knew if they would make it through the day, and yet somehow they
managed to carry on in whatever sense of normalcy they could muster. I salute all of the survivors of World War II, civilian and military. This
one’s for you.
“. . . It goes back to
an air raid shelter. Sitting in there with my mother and sister,
listening to the Luftwaffe paying us a welcome. Watching the candles
flicker. Later would come the rockets. My sister, four years older, told
me Eskimos ate candle wax. ‘Oh, don't tell him that, Mary - he'll
believe you!’ Mom said. And the bombing began. Down the street a house
was obliterated. The family in their Anderson shelter were too close to
survive. At our house, the piano blew from one wall to the other, and, as
in tornadoes and their freak affects, the curtains in a microsecond blew out
and the windows went back into position, and the curtains were hanging on the
outside of the windows.
A little man in an old
raincoat came a few days later. He jotted our damage down in a little
black book - who in officialdom in those days, didn't have a little black
book? We factored in our curtains, and chalked it up to the war effort.
‘During the raid of August 13th, severe damage was done to Stanmore and
Edgware, near to Fighter Command at Stanmore, Bentley Priory.’
The Jerries were always trying to knock out Fighter Command....twelve miles
from our house, which cost our neighbors dearly. After the war I would
ride by Bentley Priory on my bike, and listen to birdsong....
‘How many in reserves?’
Churchill asked during one dicey fight with the Luftwaffe.
‘None sir.
Cut to the end of the
war in Europe. Not the flags, although I helped my mother hoist the Union
Jack from a bedroom window. No more local concerns. Do we remove the chamber pot from the
Anderson shelter? Are we free to pee, you and me? No more getting up in
the blackest night, under strobing searchlights, creeping downstairs, holding
hands, heading for the air raid shelter. Entering through the dank
sacking opening, lit by two candles, settling onto our bunks after
checking for river rats. And the sirens, and the bombers - any English
family could tell German and English and American engines or worse - the hard uncompromising
drone of a V-1 rocket.
Dad was home on leave one
night. He worked twenty hours a day repairing Handley Page Halifax
bombers, sometime witnessing the hose washing out a tail gunner's boggy
mushy remains, all goggled and gunner wings brevet mocking him. Faithful
gloved hands, or what remained of them, on his .303 quadruple Brownings.
So Dad came home. One night, in the shelter, a V-1 cut out and spiraled
down. Dad threw himself across us, my sister and I. ‘Daddy!
Daddy! I can't breathe! I can't breathe!’
His Home Guard winter
coat uniform, complete with corporal stripes, weighted us down, suffocating,
suffocating ... except the family down the street died.
Know what? I like
Mars Bars. Candy was rationed, two ounces a week per child. I gotta
Mars Bar. Later, in l953, we emigrated to Canada. ‘Hey,’ I said,
‘They got Mars Bars.’ And I tried to figure my Canadian currency, which
earlier had been spread on the kitchen table by my dad. ‘Now, this is a
quarter, and this is called a dime...’
This morning I watched
an episode of World at War. VE Day. I remember it so well, helping
my mother hoist the Union Jack at the bedroom window... A glorious sunny
day. People festive in Trafalger Square, about twelve miles away...
Sailors in soldiers' hats -- soldiers in sailor hats...
Dancing, dancing, kissing
the girls . . .”
Much has changed since
1945, and the majority of those who experienced world war have passed from this
Earth. Yet the legacy they have left
behind shall never be forgotten, so long as their recollections are shared. Merry Christmas, everyone. I wish you all a safe and joyous holiday
season.
