After being arrested in Vienna and slung into jail in 1938, by the Nazis, for not saluting a military parade, my father, an ordinary suburban Englishman, returned (after release by the British Consul) with his best friend and his own brother in their open-top tourer car from their visit to Anschlussed-Austria and Nazi Germany, after seeing and knowing for himself with his own eyes, what was happening.

Realising that war was inevitable he, already in 1938/9, then joined a voluntary corps in the British military to get a choice of where he might serve and how, and thus avoided the flying corps because it meant certain death, despite having flown the early Sopwith Camel biplane at Norwood Aerodrome.

He was then sent to train at the officer corps at Sandhurst, which again meant he would most certainly be killed in action, so, after completing some of the course for officers, and whilst standing to attention on Parade with some inspecting high – ranking visitor on a horse, he intentionally, duly collapsed into a faint on the ground. Following which he never became an officer either, and was dismissed from Sandhurst.

Later, after domestic posting in central London, (telling me only once of the Polish Officers’ limbs that he saw in trees after a night of bombing of their club – a “ghastly sight” ) he instead was sent to entertain the troops in Aberdeen, as part of a theatre troupe for soldiers (he loved the musical theatre, especially comedy before and after the war) then sent sailing off ( with torpedoes whistling along the ships hulls ) and went on to serve in a battlefield command and signals unit for the Eighth and Ninth Armies in North Africa for two and half years, notably in El Alamein, Sidi Bou Said and Tobruk. His radio- lorry units were responsible for intercepting the messages the Nazis were sending on their ‘Ultra’ machines back to Berlin, and which the British managed to decode…which is another story.

The thing my father showed me, which I choose to remember here, was how to dance and shuffle to a busker’s jazz music , like a tap dancing ‘hoofer’, on a trip to Paris, that just me and him went on when I was 14. He never talked about the war in detail, ever. And only these few facts remain. This apparently was common to many of my generation’s fathers. They worked a lot and said little.

We are all children of someone else’s nightmare, and that affected so many of them and even some of us, inevitably, in some way, even to this day. How today’s wars affect all of us is ongoing, whether laterally through society or personally.

And although my father has been dead for many years, I’m still gob-smacked at his endeavours, stuff which I will never experience but still remain in my awareness of that time and him.

There is still a lot of hurt on this globe. Utterly unnecessary and insane.

Maybe a dance is welcome. A last waltz perhaps.

Now back to reality…or not, if you prefer.

A horse walks into a police station…

http://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2014/oct/10/horse-walks-cheshire-police-headquarters-video&sa=U&ei=9A87VN2mNczPaK-zgcAF&ved=0CAYQFjAA&client=internal-uds-cse&usg=AFQjCNGQ7f5beUXsR7BHkqYrXNyphYTSwA

1) Chamberlain had profound sympathies for the anti-war , inter -war movement following his own experiences in the WW1 trenches. He apparently convivially shared these with Adolf over their Munich sandwiches, discovering they had been just feet from each other , those years before.

2) There had been many attempts by the old aristocratic nobility in the German military to establish a coup with British assistance. The British ,however, were confused by their very-own strategic ploys and scarce UK intelligence reports and avoided supporting this organised high-level opposition to Adolf.

3) The main inter-war threat was not Adolf or Benito, indeed , it was the Bolsheviks whom the Brits and US feared most.Adolf and Benito were invested in by US capital against the red menace. Churchill esteemed Benito. The Brits even offered to concede his annexation of southern France , to keep him out of the war.
Benito had been involved, since the twenties, in ongoing negotiations with Standard Oil , of the US , for continued oil extraction rights in Italian-occupied Libya.

4) British bomber command in 1938 was aware of the strength of the Nazi air force. They implored Chamberlain to buy as much time as possible to build up the UK’s own air arm. Hence the white letter of agreement held aloft was also a strategic delay tactic by them.

Churchill launched the very first bombing raids on Lubeck, in the face of Adolf’s warning for consequent total retribution. Exeter was one of the first medieval towns to be hit and destroyed by the ‘ Baedeker Guide’ revenge fire- bombings.

I didn’t ‘spell that out’ , Satyadeva, because that was not my truth at that moment.

If Prem Martyn is up to what he is up to, in posting (which he summed up), who am I to burden him with my expectations?

Me, I wanted to simply give a feedback that I´ve been reading what he answered partly to my questions. Also letting in what he understands or wants to share about his motives to write here. And his answer left me with less illusions and that´s what I expressed.

Madhu

It may well be that what might as well be called the American Empire (or western civilisation) is beginning to go the same way.

And, to be realistic rather than pessimistic, there’s nothing much we can do about it, is there? I mean, I can barely ‘save’ myself, let alone western civilisation or the American Empire….

Imagine, for example, Osho allowing anti-sannyasin extremists into the Pune ashram, insisting that they be allowed ‘freedom of speech’.

People like Katharine Whitehorn don’t appear to realise the nature of what’s confronting ‘western (so-called) civilisation’.

Anyone for Dad’s Army? Come on, Whitehorn, look lively – don’t you know there’s a war on?!!

Didn’t the British government support ‘appeasement’ while the Nazis rose to power, despite their well-publicised ambitions of world domination, ‘Master Race’ ideology etc? Didn’t Neville Chamberlain attempt a dialogue with Hitler in 1939?

And don’t forget, their paranational equivalent nowadays have ‘God on their side’. Need I say more?

Is it simply Martyn’s “Will that do?” If so, why can’t you say, “No” – if that’s what you’d like to say?

If not that, then would you spell it out, please?