Very recently we marked the one hundredth anniversary of the end of the First World War .My memories are a bit more recent, as I was only a child in the middle of the Second World War. My understanding of what war meant was limited , both by my age ,and by my relative safely .Although it was never mentioned, both my parents fully anticipated Great Britain being occupied by the Nazis. The War was an ever present and serious reality for the adults around me.
I remember with great clarity this becoming plain to me in the midst of the harvest of 1943. At the time, I was about five years old ,and lived with my family on an old farm near Pitlochry in Perthshire.
My father had been invalided out of the Navy, and he and my mother took on the farm to “dig for victory”!.
That summer day I had been chosen to accompany my mother to the fields to bring the workers their tea. The oat crop had been cut and was in process of being stooked to dry out the grain. This was quite labour intensive, and so we had a number of German Prisoners from a near by camp to round out the workforce.
I remember I was particularly pleased to have been chosen to go. Maybe my mother thought taking me and my sister was too many kids at one time! I was very conscious of the privilege ,so I was on my best behavior. I was also very pleased to be going somewhere with my mother. In those hectic wartime days children were often in the way, and told to go outside and play!
We went to the fields in the back of a trailer behind one of our Clysdales. I loved these horses, with their beautiful feathery feet and soft noses. The trailer bed was rough planks and the ride was bumpy. I had on a rather unsuitable cotton frock and I was glad when we arrived.
The men crowded round the back of the trailer and my mother poured tea from an urn into the proffered mugs. Mother spoke quite passable German and was able to communicate with the men quite easily.
Later, I realized that most of these prisoners were from Austria and had been forced into the Nazi Army. They were very young, many were only boys of about 18 or 19 .
My father was kind and generous to these, so called, enemies. He paid
them in cigarettes ,the currency of their prison camp. In later days ,when the war ended, many were helped by my parents to remain in Britain as Displaced Persons. They came from parts of the continent ceded to the Russians, and had no wish to return there.
There was a general murmur of conversation around the back of the trailer. My mother must have noticed a young man sitting off by himself staring into the middle distance. She said to me,” why don’t you take this tea over and give it to him”. So I dutifully took the mug and carried it carefully over. He did not pay any attention and sat slumped. I did not really know what to do, so in the way of children, I stayed still and waited. Eventually he came back from his reverie and looked at me. I will never forget that look of despair and sadness and utter hopelessness on his face. I was too young to have any idea of what made him so despondent. However, I must have sensed his need for some kind of human contact. So,I sat down on the stubble and waited as he drank his tea. We had no words to say to one another. .There were only a few moments of shared communication. But the silence spoke volumes. I have never forgotten this moment. It was my first incomprehensible exposure to the agony of human existence.
I think my mother must have sensed something because she made a point later of speaking to him. She never asked me what had happened. I think it unlikely I would have been able to articulate much anyway .I never saw this boy again ,but he has remained indelibly imprinted in my memory. I always remember that fleeting moment every Remembrance Day.
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