When The Killing Stopped (12 November 1976)

In two or three days’ time it will be Remembrance Sunday.  Curiously enough, when that day comes round my thoughts turn not so much to that war of 30-odd years ago in which I was personally involved as to the war of 20-odd years before that – the war of 1914-1918.

How can that be?  I was only six when that war began and only ten when it ended.  My memory must be playing me tricks.  But no, I am convinced that over the country as a whole, from the youngest to the eldest, the first world war was the more traumatic, more poignant experience.

For the clue, you have only to look at our local village and town war memorials.  There were no war memorials to speak of before all those were erected.  See how many names on them relate to the first world war and how comparatively few to the second and you will have some idea of the respective amounts of shock and sorrow – if such feelings can be quantified at all.

I well remember the 11^th hour of the 11^th day of the 11^th month of 1918, when the armistice was signed.  All the housewives in our village stood around in little knots of two or three and they were all weeping their eyes out.  I was a very puzzled child.

I knew I would never see Uncle –, or Cousins –, –, and — again and that was sad.  But we had won, hadn’t we?  I thought we should put the flag out, but the only rejoicing just then was that the killing and maiming were over – and please God, for ever.

Our Yorkshire parish was much larger than the village itself and when the parish memorial was dedicated the following May there were 142 names on it.  The organising committee also compiled a record of all parishioners who had served and published it in the form of a hard-backed book.  Because I believe the record was typical of the whole country I will give some figures from it.  These are:

Total enrolled 1,002.  Dead, or missing, presumed killed 142.  Wounded or gassed 220.  Number of officers 17, including 14 promoted from the ranks; only one officer killed.  Decorations:  one military OBE (a padre), two Military Crosses, one DCM, 14 Military Medals and a number of foreign and minor awards.

One woman lost her three sons, two within six days of each other.  Two other households each lost two menfolk.  Other households were luckier.  They saw three menfolk go off to war and all three return, though sometimes wounded or gassed.

Most of the 1002 were either infantrymen in Yorkshire and Scottish regiments, or gunners.

Two or three men helped to man tanks the first time they were ever used.  There was also a surprising number of airmen for those days.  Air officers still held army designations and one captain was shot down over the lines, became an instructor and test pilot and flew 80 different types of aircraft before being demobbed early in 1919.

But take those figures and repeat them proportionately at Fenny, Stony, Newport, or anywhere else and you can imagine the combined effect.

I sang with the school at three such public memorial dedications.  Memorials of a lesser kind were still being unveiled well into the 1920’s, and I covered them as a cub reporter.

All this had a profound effect on me.  I soon lost my childish notions about the glory of victory and all that.  As if the stories told by returning servicemen were not enough, two male teachers came back from the war to our school.  One took a day off to go to Buckingham Palace to be presented by the king with that rare decoration, the Albert Medal.  At the next day’s assembly the other male teacher, the headmaster, congratulated him.  He was a hero in our eyes, but all he said in reply was:  “Always remember this, boys:  war is horrible – just horrible.” Then he broke down.

The effects of that first horrible waste are with us to this day.  You would have thought there would have been a subsequent shortage of manpower.  Not so.  For 19 successive years there were never fewer than a million unemployed in a workforce smaller than today’s.

When the second war came along some young men welcomed it because it gave them something to do, but those who could remember or had served in the first one faced the prospect very soberly indeed.  They were long past the stage of “Britannia rules the waves.” and “Make her mightier yet.”  They had no illusions.

One thing is certain:  the work of the Royal British Legion, which was formed as the British Legion shortly after the first war, will be needed for a long time yet, and one of the more cheerful bits of news is that the Bletchley branch now seems to be in much better fettle than it used to be.