I wrote a couple of days ago about finding during my daily walk a potential relative of my spouse's, Alexander Lobban, on the War Memorial at Ordiquhill Church. As we remember VE day 75 years ago, it is proper to think about all who we lost in wars.
I just haven't had time to pin down what the link, if any, is to her, but I do know that he did not come from a monied background.
His father was a widower aged 69 years when he married a spinster of 20 in 1882. It is a further 10 years before he is born, by which time his 79-year-old father is described as a retired farmer and a pauper. A year earlier in the 1891 census, there are four further children aged, eight, six, four and two to this 78-year-old and his 28-year-old wife.
Looking through my family research, and only looking for men who died in 1916 at Flanders, from where the idea of the red poppies we wear in November in remembrance come, I find seven entries.
My relatives among them are a cousin from Durham, another from Bradford, a great-uncle from Oban and further cousin from Bo'ness in West Lothian. All were young. Only one was old enough to be shown as having an occupation in the 1911 census, five years earlier. None held any rank above being a private soldier.
My wife's two cousins who died in Flanders that year came from Moray and from nearby Rathven. Both in their twenties in 1916. And once again, Privates.
Finally, one of my sisters-in-law lost a cousin from Brechin, who was a Lieutenant in the Cameronians.
These losses were in a single year. I think every family would be able to find similar stories about their relatives. Almost no one will be untouched.
My other sister-in-law sent us an email yesterday of her memories from around VE day in 1945. I can do no better than provide it here.
"I was in Burghead 75 yrs ago. We were special as we had a radio built by Uncle Ken which had acid batteries. Number 40 King Street was visited frequently to listen to the news.
"We all did our bit, but as a 7 or 8-year-old then I was spared seeing the horrors fed to us all daily on this new technology.
"Grandad was part of Dad's army. He was patrolling the beaches with me in tow at times. There was a small hexagonal hut in the dunes where he sat, binoculars at the ready. Looked for it a few years ago as it was near his salmon bothy. I guess it being wooden it either rotted or was removed.
"That beach was way out of sight of the Coastguard station so needed watching. Technology nil; rabbit gun yes.
"Auntie Chrissie & Ken spent a lot of time there as well. Grandad when the tide was out on the north beach, had a huke which he used to catch lobsters or crabs trapped under rock shelving & seaweed which was taken back to No 40 with the catch.
"I was a message girl usually to the doctor or the minister and was rewarded by one boiling sweetie. What a treat!
"Classrooms were always packed out. We were collecting for recycling, gathering rosehips, wild berries etc.; all for the war effort."
It's fascinating to listen to recollections of times past. The sister-in-law who emailed me had as a father-in-law a great character called Bob. He talked to me about his memories of them coming back from the Boer War in 1902. He went on to survive service in the Great War and lived to his late 90s. He was still getting on the bus each year to the Highland Show at that age. A great character.
And I believe there's a "character" in every person that's worth remembering.
When I was, for a number of months only, a nurse in Ward M2 of Stratheden Hospital in 1964, I learned a lot. Some of it about myself. Rather more from the 32 patients, we looked after. They were in a locked ward, for their rather than the public's, safety. But most would have done well enough, with a little support, had they lived outside the old Victorian asylum that looked after them.
There are always conspiracy theories around. Not just in modern times. The fall of Marie Antoinette was not simply because of her ill-advised advice, "let them eat cake", it was also because she was an Austrian princess. There was long-standing enmity between France and Austria that her dynastic marriage into the French Royal family was supposed to moderate.
She was the subject to a vile campaign in France by people not wishing to be reconciled to Austria. Cartoons circulated showing her engaged in many sexual acts. Her reputation was created in part by deliberate untruths created by her enemies.
On social media today, invented scare stories circulate with a rapidity previously not possible. Some sound plausible but can be seen to be unbelievable after the briefest of enquiry. But they can become fixed in some people's minds so firmly as to be difficult to dislodge. At times of crisis, this danger is greatest.
One of the patients in ward M2 had a particularly difficult path that had brought him into our care.
He was a Jew in Poland in about 1945 when the Russians took over the country from the Germans. He asked the authorities to be allowed to emigrate to Palestine. It was a few years before the creation of the State of Israel. Stalin's policies, he ran Russia then, saw him thrown into a Siberian Gulag, a prison camp for political prisoners.
He was tortured, starved and caught tuberculosis while there. We could see the permanent evidence of beatings on his body. Eventually, his mental health collapsed. The Russians then allowed him to leave the country and he ended up with us.
His TB was cured, and his body returned, to the extent that was possible, towards normality. But his mind remained in the grip of a deep psychosis. He believed that he was still in a Russian Gulag and that he continued to suffer from TB.
We might think there was decisive evidence to the contrary that he could see. We all spoke English, the ward radio was tuned to the BBC Light Programme (except when the ward sister was absent when it was Radio Caroline, the pirate station) and he was given a local daily paper to read. All this caused him to believe that he must be a very important prisoner. We were going to all this trouble to deceive him.
We must all help such people and must tolerate their actions, caused by illness, not malice.
But we must never read conspiracy as the first option as the cause for difficulties in the world.
And we must never tolerate untruths.
I just haven't had time to pin down what the link, if any, is to her, but I do know that he did not come from a monied background.
His father was a widower aged 69 years when he married a spinster of 20 in 1882. It is a further 10 years before he is born, by which time his 79-year-old father is described as a retired farmer and a pauper. A year earlier in the 1891 census, there are four further children aged, eight, six, four and two to this 78-year-old and his 28-year-old wife.
Looking through my family research, and only looking for men who died in 1916 at Flanders, from where the idea of the red poppies we wear in November in remembrance come, I find seven entries.
My relatives among them are a cousin from Durham, another from Bradford, a great-uncle from Oban and further cousin from Bo'ness in West Lothian. All were young. Only one was old enough to be shown as having an occupation in the 1911 census, five years earlier. None held any rank above being a private soldier.
My wife's two cousins who died in Flanders that year came from Moray and from nearby Rathven. Both in their twenties in 1916. And once again, Privates.
Finally, one of my sisters-in-law lost a cousin from Brechin, who was a Lieutenant in the Cameronians.
These losses were in a single year. I think every family would be able to find similar stories about their relatives. Almost no one will be untouched.
My other sister-in-law sent us an email yesterday of her memories from around VE day in 1945. I can do no better than provide it here.
"I was in Burghead 75 yrs ago. We were special as we had a radio built by Uncle Ken which had acid batteries. Number 40 King Street was visited frequently to listen to the news.
"We all did our bit, but as a 7 or 8-year-old then I was spared seeing the horrors fed to us all daily on this new technology.
"Grandad was part of Dad's army. He was patrolling the beaches with me in tow at times. There was a small hexagonal hut in the dunes where he sat, binoculars at the ready. Looked for it a few years ago as it was near his salmon bothy. I guess it being wooden it either rotted or was removed.
"That beach was way out of sight of the Coastguard station so needed watching. Technology nil; rabbit gun yes.
"Auntie Chrissie & Ken spent a lot of time there as well. Grandad when the tide was out on the north beach, had a huke which he used to catch lobsters or crabs trapped under rock shelving & seaweed which was taken back to No 40 with the catch.
"I was a message girl usually to the doctor or the minister and was rewarded by one boiling sweetie. What a treat!
"Classrooms were always packed out. We were collecting for recycling, gathering rosehips, wild berries etc.; all for the war effort."
It's fascinating to listen to recollections of times past. The sister-in-law who emailed me had as a father-in-law a great character called Bob. He talked to me about his memories of them coming back from the Boer War in 1902. He went on to survive service in the Great War and lived to his late 90s. He was still getting on the bus each year to the Highland Show at that age. A great character.
And I believe there's a "character" in every person that's worth remembering.
When I was, for a number of months only, a nurse in Ward M2 of Stratheden Hospital in 1964, I learned a lot. Some of it about myself. Rather more from the 32 patients, we looked after. They were in a locked ward, for their rather than the public's, safety. But most would have done well enough, with a little support, had they lived outside the old Victorian asylum that looked after them.
There are always conspiracy theories around. Not just in modern times. The fall of Marie Antoinette was not simply because of her ill-advised advice, "let them eat cake", it was also because she was an Austrian princess. There was long-standing enmity between France and Austria that her dynastic marriage into the French Royal family was supposed to moderate.
She was the subject to a vile campaign in France by people not wishing to be reconciled to Austria. Cartoons circulated showing her engaged in many sexual acts. Her reputation was created in part by deliberate untruths created by her enemies.
On social media today, invented scare stories circulate with a rapidity previously not possible. Some sound plausible but can be seen to be unbelievable after the briefest of enquiry. But they can become fixed in some people's minds so firmly as to be difficult to dislodge. At times of crisis, this danger is greatest.
One of the patients in ward M2 had a particularly difficult path that had brought him into our care.
He was a Jew in Poland in about 1945 when the Russians took over the country from the Germans. He asked the authorities to be allowed to emigrate to Palestine. It was a few years before the creation of the State of Israel. Stalin's policies, he ran Russia then, saw him thrown into a Siberian Gulag, a prison camp for political prisoners.
He was tortured, starved and caught tuberculosis while there. We could see the permanent evidence of beatings on his body. Eventually, his mental health collapsed. The Russians then allowed him to leave the country and he ended up with us.
His TB was cured, and his body returned, to the extent that was possible, towards normality. But his mind remained in the grip of a deep psychosis. He believed that he was still in a Russian Gulag and that he continued to suffer from TB.
We might think there was decisive evidence to the contrary that he could see. We all spoke English, the ward radio was tuned to the BBC Light Programme (except when the ward sister was absent when it was Radio Caroline, the pirate station) and he was given a local daily paper to read. All this caused him to believe that he must be a very important prisoner. We were going to all this trouble to deceive him.
We must all help such people and must tolerate their actions, caused by illness, not malice.
But we must never read conspiracy as the first option as the cause for difficulties in the world.
And we must never tolerate untruths.
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