Remembrance sunday

There's a couple of threads on here about remembrance sunday, which got me thinking. I have a couple of tales that were passed on to me, but not wanting to hijack other people's threads, I thought I'd start a new one. Feel free to add your own here, or of course start your own thread

My grandads told many stories of their experiences, but I'm not going to list them here (that would make for one huge thread). I'm just going to recount one very surprising chat I had with a great uncle once.

We were standing in my mam's back yard, just me and my great uncle, discussing plants. He was a keen and very proficient gardener, and I was always happy to hear what he had to say on the subject, but on this occasion, the conversation drifted quite far off topic. He started on about how bored he was with life in general, and how he knew his time was nearly up. From there it led on to how none (not even one) of his old mates was left, and his wife had passed on, so he knew he was on borrowed time. From there he got onto the war. He had been a Royal Marine during WW2. Proper hardcore elite commando sort. He always played this down. Then he said the most surprising thing. Out of the blue, he suddenly said "I feel sorry for the lads, and indeed lasses nowadays, of today. Their job is so much harder than ours was". I was taken aback at this. I replied along the lines of, "but by comparison, you had primitive, heavy, unreliable, slow weapons, boots that didn't fit properly, and virtually no technology to help you. No satnav, very limited radio etc". I just couldn't believe he would think it was easier with such primitive kit compared to today. He replied simply, and I remember his words exactly, "but in my day it was simple. You see one uniform, you shoot it, you see another uniform, you don't shoot it. Now there are no uniforms, you don't know whether you're looking at a civilian or a soldier, ally or enemy". He went on to say something along the lines of, you shoot now and you cant be sure whether your saving your mates or murdering an innocent person. he said there's no way a kid of 18 or 19 or 20 should have to carry that sort of responsibility on his shoulders. I'd never thought of it like that before.

 

So true.