Skip to main content

Memories

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.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Going round in circles

Today is the first day of some significant moves to lift aspects of lockdown. I have certainly seen a wee bit more in the way of visitors coming to our area. But as we were never overrun with visitors in the immediate area within which I walk, I can't separate the summer increase from other factors. South of the border there seems a curious reluctance to lead with some changes. When the President of the United States has appeared in public wearing a face mask, it is hardly radical to require us to protect others by covering our mouth and nose. Making it the law to wear a mask in shops removes ambiguity and creates simplicity. I carry my mask at all times and yesterday found an unexpected benefit to doing so. On my walks, if someone engages me in conversation and there is no physical barrier that will naturally keep us well apart, on goes the mask. For example, I had a bonny conversation a couple of days ago over a low wall with someone who has had to shield. We had some commo...

Unfinished ...

Yesterday was a hard day wrestling words. Or should that be wrangling? No; definitely wrestling. Because wrangling is defined as "engagement in a long, complicated dispute or argument." And that's scheduled for later today when I start my participation in the Coronavirus (Scotland) (No.2) Bill Stage 2 debates and the 55 amendments we have to dispose of between 0900 and 1400. The wrestling yesterday was trying to force words into a sensible structure for deploying in an argument. It took some time, five online meetings to be precise and a few off-the-field time-outs for tea, coffee and a couple of consultations with a dictionary. There's a rule of thumb about speechifying. Preparation takes ten times as long as delivery. And that's only about constructing the words into the right order for a decent wrangle. For some subjects, the acquisition of the background knowledge to enable you to find the right words is a lifetime's effort. I expect that I shall ...

Baron times

The latest list of peerages brings back to centre stage the question of what is democracy? And it's not just my political colleagues who are noticing the relevance of the question. Although the SNP have nailed their colours to the mast and have never put forward anyone for nomination. I confess to having brought forward a resolution to our national conference some years ago suggesting that we should do so. On the basis that we should be there to keep an eye on Scotland's interest in a body that had significant power over us. I cannot quite remember when I did this. May have been 2006. But our conference was very clear in its view. The proposition was heavily defeated. When the second story, it comes below that huge explosion in Beiruit, from the New York Times engages with the democracy question raised by the PM's list of new peers, you know that this is a matter which is further undermining the idea that Scotland is part of a democratic state. Here's what the ...