Returning to the House of Lords yesterday my holiday in Scotland seemed rather distant but during that holiday I took time out to go to the memorial at Cove near Poolewe where the arctic convoys left for Russia during the Second World War. http://www.naval-history.net/WW2CampaignsRussianConvoys.htm
A couple of years ago I had visited a local museum and made contact with a group seeking to raise funds to preserve the memory of this important campaign. http://www.russianarcticconvoymuseum.co.uk/ I arranged an event at the House of Lords for the veterans and I was then invited to attend the 70th anniversary event at Poolewe. There is a memorial at Cove and pictures are shown in the report which I attended a couple of weeks ago. http://forargyll.com/2011/08/roy-elwood-loch-ewe-celebration-of-arctic-convoy-operation-dervish/
During the service the rain was lashing down and a strong wind blowing but that just served to remind me what it must have been like on these ships in January. One of the local stories concerned a ship that was wrecked and many lost their lives but local people struggled through the January snow to rescue those that managed to get ashore. One woman carried a sailor several miles in really appalling weather conditions.
The ships would often be coated in ice and some even capsized because of the weight of ice. If you were torpedoed or bombed then the chances of survival in those arctic waters were minimal. It is hard to imagine what it must have been like.
The Russians remember this well and teach their school children about it. One of the veterans received an award from the Russian Consulate for his work on keeping the memory alive. If the Russians can remember the sacrcifices made in this very tough campaign why don’t we remember it better?
“Why don’t we remember ot better ?”
BNecause we might hasve “won” the war, but evidently have not only not been winning the Peace but, also evidently, been losing it.
(If ongoing historical, geographic, scientific and TV Documentaries evidence has not yet shown you that this has long been the case, browse through the 200 pages medium-large print of “The Chaos Factor” by Ervin Laszlo,
And there are more evidence and strategy-contributing publications stacking up, denied, unread).
As late as 1969 I became a disabled re-trainee in St Loyes College Exeter where there came into a bed opposite, in the eight-person dormitory of mixed-trainees some long such as motor-mechanic and some short likebook-keeping or electronic-wiring, an AB veteran from those convoys of ships to wartime Russia. His story leaked out; and oner evening we got him to confirm it and add detail:
He had been on one convoy which set out from UK over 200 ships in number, but returned less than 50 ships in number.
Upon discharge this AB, whose family of wife and two children had also survived while he was away, had to queue outside the Labour Exchange to get a job, which turned out to be as a house Painter to get to the buildoing-site of which he had to walk seven miles, there and back, in England’s bleak midwinter.
The building trade has always been a precarious one, and so he was paid by the day or hourly part thereof. with no ‘retainer’ nor ‘walking time’.
One morning he trudged through heavy snow to the workplace only to be told by the foreman “No work today; sorry mate”.
Years later here he was “disabled”, by having his larynx cut ot due to cancer; but fortunate enough to qualify to be re-trained
Sorry, my above got accidentally posted, by a keyboard, not mouse, slip.
now < 250 words:
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“Why don’t we remember it better ?”
Because we might have “won” the war, but evidently have not only not been winning the Peace but, also evidently, been losing it.
In 1969 at St Loyes College Exeter, there came into a bed opposite an AB veteran from those convoys of ships to wartime Russia.
His story leaked out; and we got him to confirm it.
He had been on one convoy which set out from UK with over 200 ships, but returned less than 50 ships (“conservative” figures, the exact numbers I've forgotten).
Upon discharge this AB, whose wife and two children had also survived, got a job as a Painter, to get to the building-site of which he had to walk seven miles, there and back, in England’s bleak midwinter.
They were paid by the day or hourly part thereof: no ‘retainer’, no ‘walking time’, and no ‘separation’ pay.
One morning he trudged through heavy snow to that workplace, only to be told by the foreman “No work today; sorry mate”.
Years later he became physically “disabled”, by having his larynx cut out due to cancer;
but he was fortunate enough to get re-training as a book-keeper (one of the shortest courses).
A few years later I was told he had died not long after qualifying and starting book-keeping, the operation having failed.
Surely a number political, social, human-needs, human-rights, and Public-right to know, issues are entangled therein ?
1207PM.T060911.JSDM.
Lord Soley,
Very moving piece. What a good reminder to honor the valiant dead. It is so obvious when one needs sizable numbers of those willing to die in the cause of country but harder to keep the tradition of gallantry alive in less extreme moments.
MilesJSD,
Your exact meaning is not clear to me but warriors are necessary if a society is to survive in any sense as something approaching sovereign. When things get intense enough casualties will be high.
Rearing children and raising crops training and inspiring soldiers and corsairs, preserving a working marketplace, maintaining literacy and a handful of other pursuits are the basis of all others in civilization. War-making is not the most basic but is one of the most basic of these and a military that can kill but not die well is in the end no military at all — though better than nothing till it fails. Things go too far in that dying direction often enough but without the 3,000 who died on and around those cold ships and other people like them the war would surely have been lost.
And you, being an American, have seen those tasks performed by your government so well, haven’t you?
Maude Elwes,
My post above to MilesJSD is a response to a post that was deleted after I posted. I resubmitted a post tot that effect but it has not appeared. In that context no further substantive comment is possible.
@ FWSIII
your published reply to my ‘reply’ to Lord Soley’s question “Why don’t we remember” (such horrorm as the northern ‘Cold Ships (of Agony and Death))’
wherein I tried to intimate that “we don’t remember” because
(i) we are still strapped to the deck trying to win the Peace
(ii) both our nation-state government, and our nation-of-people, badly neglected numbers of our returning service-personnel;
which in turn led both government and British society to ‘silence’ the whole war (not difficult since even we at home, in relative comfort, had had more than enough of “war”) –
except during one morning once a year, when the brass bands play and many crippled veterans dress up in as full military uniform as they can afford, and ‘muster’ along with old ‘mates’, and march past the Cenotaph trying to visibly deliver one poppy per head to stand for “Those who laid down their lives for Us, for Britian, and for the Free World” and in a more succinct spirit from the ‘forgotten’ Far East defence against Japanese aggression and deliberately bestial torture and execution of millions of civilians as well as of legitimate prisoners-of-war
“please remember us, who are giving our Today so that you at home might have a Tomorrow”
So many truisms – stuck in revolving doors.
How to come up to date, and truly be winning the Peace ?
in <250words ?
(iii) from topmost Establishment people to lowest underclass people, throughout the West today, totally insufficient numbers of “our” politicians, social-leaders, Human-Rights & Right-to-Know judiciaries, and “democratiucally-free” national populations, are even aware of positive peace-building and Earth-saving advances in knowledge, know-how, and sustainworthiness-raising,
much less having yet even read any of them:
currently
“After America: get ready for Armageddon” (Mark Steyn, USA);
read just pages 1 – 23 ‘The Stupidity of Broke’: it more than justifies Maude Elwes’s brief ‘cry’ from under her, as I picture it, individual democratic-desk overload;
and more scaringly Steyn shows USA to be literally “handing over to China’s Military Growth an imminently future Dominion power over the whole World.
“The World Turned Upside Down: the global battle over God, Truth, and Power” (Melanie Phillips, England);
“The Chaos Point” (Ervin Laszlo, Club of Budapest);
“Living In The End Times” (Slavoj Zizek, Slovenia);
(please add such advances as you know about)
I’ve done.