MEMORIAL WEEKEND: WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO YOU?
By Glynn Burrows
I think, for all of us, it means something different, and a lot depends on how old we are and what conflicts we, members of our families, or people we know, have been involved in.
For me, every Poppy Day, I always think of the members of my own family who were involved in World War I and World War II.
ON BIG BLEND RADIO: Glynn Burrows, owner of Norfolk Tours, reflects on how we can respectfully remember those who lived through and lost their lives in World War I and World War II. Watch here in the YouTube player or download the episode on Podbean.
Several of my relations were in France in the 1914-18 war and one particular man, who I was lucky enough to meet, told me about his own experiences in the trenches. It was difficult to hear a man, in his nineties, reliving the horrors of trench warfare and several things he told me are always firmly embedded in my memory:
He was telling me about the terrible cold and the mud, but the mud was not made up of water and soil, it was the blood in the trench which made the ground muddy.
One day, he was standing shoulder to shoulder with one of his mates and he felt a dull thud. His mate nudged him, or so he thought, but it was the thud and the impact of the bullet that had killed his mate which he had felt.
Those memories were still engraved in that man’s memory, and he was still living them, some eighty years later.
Another of my relatives was my Dad’s Uncle George. He was only in his early twenties when he was evacuated from the Normandy Beaches and, after that terrible experience, he was sent off, with thousands of his fellows to Singapore. He was in one of the most notorious battles of the War, when battalion after battalion was sent on a totally pointless mission and many were walking straight into their graves. Most of those who survived the battles ended up in POW camps, to suffer for years, at the hands of the Japanese. My Great Uncle George was “missing, presumed dead” and his family have, to this day, had no confirmation of what happened to him.
In the UK, nearly every city, town, village, and hamlet has a War Memorial with a list of names of the locals who lost their lives in the two World Wars.
Just let that sink in. Every single person who lived in the UK at the time of those conflicts knew someone who had died in the Wars. Not only did they know someone, but they knew someone well, who lived next door, in the same street, was related to, worked with, or went to school with someone who died.
In the days since 1945, the UK hasn’t been involved in as many conflicts, so I don’t actually know anyone personally who has been killed in a war. I know people who have been involved in The Falklands and the Middle East, Iraq, Afghanistan, and other fracas, but nobody I know or knew, has been killed. My daughter, on the other hand, was at school with a boy who lost his life in Afghanistan, so her thoughts on Poppy Day are probably with Ben.
As an historian, a lot of my research throws up some amazing stories of bravery and sacrifice and it isn’t always at the battlefront. One of my favourite sayings is: “Not all heroes wear capes” because heroism comes in many forms.
One lady who was a truly amazing woman is Nurse Edith Cavell. I won’t go into the whole story here, suffice to say that this nurse helped allies to get back to England from the continent and, for her trouble, she was shot in 1915. Do read her full story, it is inspirational.
Another woman, who, after the war, kept our local Post Office, was Jeannie MacIntosh. She did very similar things in World War II, and she was tortured by the Gestapo. Another amazing woman.
No matter who you are thinking of on Memorial Day, or even if you don’t have anyone to think of, just thank them for giving their tomorrow for our today.
Glynn Burrows is the owner of Norfolk Tours in England where he provides customized, private tours and also helps his clients trace their English family history. If you are thinking about taking a vacation to England, visit www.Norfolk-Tours.co.uk.
