Henry Allingham dies aged 113
Jul. 18th, 2009 09:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
inzilbethhttp://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8157447.stm
Now only Harry patch, aged 111, remains of those UK servicemen who fought in WW1
I remember listening to Henry talk of his experiences in a documentary some years ago. As always, I was struck by how vividly all these veterans remember every detail and by how the things they saw and did in those few years of their youth have remained the most important experiences of their lives. I was only discussing this with a colleague at work a couple of days ago. He was going to meet a survivor of the very concentration camp that his late father had helped liberate at the end of WW2. His father apparently never spoke much about those times but apparently everything he experienced in his life after the war, including getting married and raising a family, was an anticlimax to him, such was the impact of the things he had done and witnessed during the war.
I don't think we can ever really understand the debt that we owe such people. That fact that JRR Tolkien himself was one of them is something I never forget either.
Now only Harry patch, aged 111, remains of those UK servicemen who fought in WW1
I remember listening to Henry talk of his experiences in a documentary some years ago. As always, I was struck by how vividly all these veterans remember every detail and by how the things they saw and did in those few years of their youth have remained the most important experiences of their lives. I was only discussing this with a colleague at work a couple of days ago. He was going to meet a survivor of the very concentration camp that his late father had helped liberate at the end of WW2. His father apparently never spoke much about those times but apparently everything he experienced in his life after the war, including getting married and raising a family, was an anticlimax to him, such was the impact of the things he had done and witnessed during the war.
I don't think we can ever really understand the debt that we owe such people. That fact that JRR Tolkien himself was one of them is something I never forget either.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2009-07-20 09:57 am (UTC)I've heard people (of all nations involved) say things like that quite often, too. One of my grandpas was in Russia in WW2, and I know from letters he wrote to my grandma that he often had surprisingly peaceful and friendly encounters with the Russian civilian population. It was also clear that he was deeply ashamed and horrified by how parts of the German army behaved in that country - he was no Nazi (thank God there was not a single Nazi in both parts of my family) but a pastor who belonged to the same peaceful resistance movement Dietrich Bonhöffer was part of. He spent years in a Russian prisoner-of-war-camp after the war. He never spoke about that time. I think we really can't begin to understand what those soldiers have gone through in both World Wars.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-07-20 01:06 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-07-21 11:12 am (UTC)It was the same with my grandpa. If I hadn't been the one who typed the letters he wrote to my grandma into the computer, I had likely never learned anything about that part of his life.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-07-21 01:12 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-07-21 08:19 pm (UTC)Oh, you have changed your journal - I like that theme! It's a variation of the one I'm using. I think you have the dawn and I have the night. ;-)
(no subject)
Date: 2009-07-21 09:20 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-07-22 10:09 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-07-22 11:28 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-07-22 06:03 pm (UTC)Me, too! :)