Keep the Home Fires Burning

There can be few who are not aware of this song, so evocative of the First World War.  While we may not know the verses, like many songs of the age, we've probably heard at least part of the chorus.  It gives voice to the emotion of the families left at home while their menfolk were at the front, as it ends, "Turn the dark cloud inside out, till the boys come home."  How true were these words by Lena Guilbert Ford, set to music by Ivor Novello, for whom they were his first musical success?

For many returning it was a change of scenery, and a relief from constant shelling and danger, but it was a difficult rather than warming and welcoming home-coming.  One veteran of the conflict told of his first night at home for four years, "My mother came to wake me up in the morning and found me sleeping on the floor."  After so long a real bed with proper sheets felt so strange.  

Few, we're told, spoke about their experiences of the war.  Not only was this because of the inherent horror of the memories, but - as many found when they were home on leave - life in the safe and rosy countryside of England was so different from what had become normal for them, that there was no point where the two worlds could touch to form a basis for meaningful conversation.  I believe the same was true of the Second World War.  Of my closest relatives who served, only one survived, and he said very little about it, if anything.  

To those who weren't directly involved in these conflicts, the horrors of war were irrelevant.  To many, especially if they were fortunate enough not to have lost loved ones, the wars' greatest significance was as a measure of time.  I grew up in a home where the expression 'before the war' was common.  There was no need to specify which war.  If a period somewhat earlier was being referred to, the words were simply extended to, 'before the first war'.  Even today, it's common to refer to certain houses as 'built between the wars'.

The centenary of the First World War has, for me, brought that earlier conflict into sharper focus, and I've learned a lot about it that I hadn't known before ... having been schooled in the age when 'history ended in 1914'.  One thing I've realised about these conflicts is that both were truly 'worldwide wars'; scarcely a single country in the world was untouched by them in one way or another.

Now, we find ourselves in another war, that against Covid-19.  Like those other wars this, too, is a worldwide conflict, but sadly the nations are not co-operating as with a tangible enemy, and the richer nations seem reluctant to share their resources with others less fortunate.  

As in those 'real' wars, many people are 'on the home front'.  They find their daily lives are restricted by anti-covid measures, but they don't actually come into contact with the conflict.  They are - since I'm one, I should say 'we are' - just getting on with our own lives as best we can, and leaving the fighting to the 'soldiers' of the NHS.  There is a disconnect of real understanding that results from that lack of direct involvement.

The sentiment behind that song with which I began this post was 'when it's all over, when the boys come home, we can go back to how things used to be.'  Only it wasn't.  It wasn't 'over by Christmas', as some had hoped, or believed, it would be.  The 'homes for heroes' didn't materialise, at least not the way people expected: there was too much anxiety about finding a job, getting what war pension they could, and pretty soon there was economic depression.  

The same was true in the late 'forties.  Some would have liked the pleasant life of the 'thirties to return, but the world, technology and social climes had moved on in six years.  Genies were out of  bottles and weren't going back.  

And I wonder whether we shall ever again see 'pre-Covid' days?  So much of our world has changed since the end of 2019.  How long will it be before - indeed, it's already here - we're saying, as a measure of time, "before Covid ..."?