TheBanyanTree: Horrid images

[John Bailey]

Monday March 31, 2003

HORRID IMAGES

         Warning: this entry contains some description of pretty nasty 
things, and
         draws a pretty nasty conclusion.  Those of a sensitive nature might be
         best advised to give it a miss.

My father served as a fireman in London throughout WWII, helping to put out 
the fires that the bombs started, and to rescue wounded civilians the bombs 
had knocked down.

Goodness knows what horrid things he saw and I fear that there's no knowing 
the totality or the extent of the images that remained in his memories. He 
was not a vocal man, not back then and not later in life. Besides, such 
things were rarely discussed in front of children; in war-time Britain as 
much as could be done was done to protect the children from the horrors of 
the world about them.

He did tell stories, though, when he thought there was something to be 
learned from them, avoiding the graphic detail so as to keep the nightmares 
away from us. And away from himself, perhaps. I don't blame him for that, 
and it's too late to ask him now.  I'm grateful for the stories, though, 
and for his pains to shield me as a child from the grim detail.

Most of those stories have gone, disappeared without trace.  He didn't 
write them down. Neither did I, and a busy life has pushed my recollection 
of most of them into corners of my mind where memory doesn't visit. I hope 
he was as successful in losing sight of the horrid images as he grew older.

Today, though, one of his stories came back to me, vivid as the first time 
he told it back in the hard days of war-time London and as he re-told it 
now and again in the years that followed. It's a simple story, without much 
in the way of detail, relating an event he experienced during a clear-up 
operation after a heavy night's bombing in a residential area of South 
London. Kennington, for those who know the place. With his mates he was 
searching the rubble and the heaps of broken masonry for survivors and for 
the bodies of those who did not survive. He came across a small child, a 
little girl, laying face up among the rubble. She was a pretty girl, he 
said, with curls of blonde hair and with her eyes closed peacefully as if 
in sleep.  Apart from the dust, she was completely unmarked. Except that, 
when my father picked her up, it was to discover that the back of her head 
was completely missing.

It was a memory, clearly, that affected him deeply. I can see him sitting 
there, rubbing his hands together fiercely in the way that men do in an 
effort to contain their emotion, his face screwed up against the image in 
his mind.

He drew no great conclusion from it, not then, and not later. He knew full 
well that children in the enemy's country suffered just as much.  His only 
comment was to mutter 'Bloody Nazis!'  And, again, 'Bloody Nazis!'

What did I learn from the tale? I learned a little about my father, of 
course, and that death can come peacefully in even the most ghastly of 
situations. My father knew and was careful to point out to me that the 
child would have felt nothing and that the pain was reserved to those who 
found her, and mourned her. That's a lesson for which I've been grateful 
over the years, the knowledge that there is peace in death, and an end to 
suffering.

Why remember it today? Easy enough. Today I saw a series of photographs 
from one of the large Arab news services, depicting the horror on the 
ground in Iraq. One of them showed the body of a pretty girl, face in 
repose, eyes closed, and the back of her head completely missing. What my 
father didn't tell me, to spare my feelings, was the way the scalp of the 
child was peeled back by the force of the explosion, its edges drying and 
curling back on the hair just like the skin of a rabbit stretched out on a 
board to dry. That's a horrid image and, as I think of it, I wish I could 
reach out to my father and hold his hands in comfort.

I wish, too, I could reach out to comfort those who found this innocent 
child's body, and those who are greiving for her. I'm not sure that my 
effort would be kindly received, and I can't say I'd blame them for 
rejecting it.

And if as they sit in a corner, rubbing their hands to contain their grief, 
they should mutter 'Bloody Nazis!' I don't think I'd be able to blame them 
for that, either. No, I'm sure I couldn't. For, this time, and after all 
these years, I fear that the bloody nazis are us.


--
John Bailey   Carmarthenshire, Wales
journal of a writing man
<http://www.oldgreypoet.com>