As Far as You Can ... and Beyond!

One of the blessings of belonging to a church where there are many young people is the joy of watching children grow up.  In recent years I have had to come to terms with my almost complete failure as a parent, and this has been helped by having such a plethora of families around me on a regular basis.  That doesn't mean that I actually have a lot to do with the children; quite the reverse, in fact.  But, to a people-watcher of long standing, there is a lot of activity to attract my eye.

One aspect of seeing the development of children is wondering what they will remember.  The older we get, the smaller part of our total memory is any one individual year, and it could be argued that those years most distant are the ones that drop out of focus quickest.  Against this is anecdotal evidence that old people can clearly remember what happened in their schooldays while being completely unable to recall what happened last year ... or even, sometimes, last week!  Certainly this was true of my parents in their latter years and I'm beginning to find it so for myself.

This week has been filled with memories for a decreasing body of World War II veterans as we have seen in the news media the commemorations of the 75th anniversary of D-Day, the invasion of occupied Europe that was the beginning of the end of the War.  'What did you do in the War, Daddy?' was the title of a film comedy released in 1966, but the question was a very real and current one for quite some while during those years when I was a teenager.  Personally, it was a question to which I could never receive an exciting answer.  Since my father worked on a farm and mother in a grocery store, they were both engaged in 'keeping the home fires burning' (to quote a song title from an earlier age).

However, I grew up in the knowledge that my mother's brother had died while a prisoner of war in the Far East, and it must have been in those teenage years that I learned the basic fact that my father's nephew had died on service with the RAF.  It wasn't until comparatively recently that I was able to research the details of this, which I published here five years ago on the 70th anniversary ... which was far and away the most popular and widely read of these blog posts.

I began by wondering what today's children will remember as they grow old towards the end of this 21st century.  The news bulletins this week, referring to the commemorative events at Portsmouth and our Queen's speech referring to the 'wartime generation ... my generation', kick-started a brief flashback to one of my earliest memories.  It wasn't a specific occasion, but an 'atmosphere' of what life looked like then, with open coal fires for heating (one room only) in a tiled fireplace above which hung a big mirror on a chain, there was linoleum on the floor, covered in part by a hearthrug and hand-made mats and, for reading material, comics like Jack and Jill and Robin.

When I went to the senior school, ten years or so after these memories, 'History stopped at 1914' so, although I knew first-hand, as it were, the personal tragedy of World War II, it wasn't until adulthood that I learned something of the events that had led to its outbreak.  Alarmingly, some aspects of those events of the 1930s are being referred to in current times.  In July 1932, NSDAP, the party led by Adolf Hitler, gained the most votes and the greatest number of seats in the German Reichstag, although not an outright majority.  At a second election in November, the outcome was broadly the same, although NSDAP won fewer seats this time; however, only four months later, by the use of political strategy coupled with paramilitary activity, Hitler had become president, had engineered another election and now led a majority coalition in the Reichstag.  The rest, as they say, is history.

As far-right characters parade across our political stage in connection with elections near and far, we are reminded of this chain of events with the suggestion that the same could happen here.  Wild theories, frightening speculation  or a genuine possibility to guard against?  Your guess is as good as mine!