Advice from Old PeopleSometimes, just sometimes, old people say something worth listening to. Ok, so it's like picking the needle out of a whole haystack of mis-remembered war stories, but those gems should be celebrated.
Tell us something worthwhile an old-type person has told you.
Note, we're leaving the definition of old up to you, you smooth-skinned youngsters.
(
chthonic, Thu 19 Jun 2008, 16:16)
« Go Back | See The Full Thread
My ol'grampsAged but 14 my dad's dad went off to France in the first world war (stretcher bearer) and then, due to a overdeveloped sense of patriotism (and interest in sticking it to the Germans again) went off in 1939 to help organise resistence in France (fluent french and german speaker and explosives specialist).
Never really spoke about it and died when I was quite young; too young to appreciate what he had done, but my dad used to talk about being woken by him screaming in the night. Quite scary to think what they all went through given that we now have a small and remote profesional army whose experiences, duly sanitized by the media and our overexposure to ad hoc violence, doesn't really teach us about the dreadfulness of war.
With the ABA we took some veterans to the Normandy beaches a couple of years ago. It was tragic watching now old men sifting sand through their fingers talking of events 60 years before and friends who had died with them as if it were yesterday.
I now live in Hong Kong where a typically small british, singaporean and canadian force kept the japanese at bay for 18 days before surrendering and feeling the full wrath of the japanese forces. Virtually no memorials or mention of it in the guidebooks, just a couple of statues and a plaque at Stanley.
I'm going to spend this weekend exploring for some resonance to this bit of history.
(, Tue 24 Jun 2008, 7:36, Reply)
« Go Back | See The Full Thread