Remembrance musings

What with our recent trip to Belgium, my work over the last 4 years on the Norfolkinworldwar1 website and the recent poppy project along with reading a lot of books connected to WW1 you could say I've been pretty immersed in the whole conflict for quite sometime.

I've enjoyed it a lot (enjoyed the research and learning, obviously not the horror of war) and this past November with the commemorations of Armistice100 a few thoughts have been swirling in my mind. In no particular order, and with no answers they include...

There has been, rightly, a lot of focus on the horrors and losses of war - but these have not focused much on those who came back injured either physically or mentally.

• I wonder if this is because when the men returned they didn't (or couldn't) talk about their experiences? We don't have their stories but the people who lost family members wanted to keep their stories alive and so we 'know' more about them... 
• This also ties in with family history research - records are sealed for around 100 years in a lot of cases and so only the bare bones of survivor stories can be researched, where as there are often many more records available for the dead...
• The increase in ease of completing family history research thanks to the internet could also be a factor in this, along with the ease of visiting many of the WW1 locations...
• There is also the point that we have very few, if any, survivors from the period to talk to - even our centenarians were born as the war drew to a close and so have very few memories of the period. They also grew up in a time where feelings were more repressed and so didn't ask/find out the thoughts, feelings and experiences of their parents...

My other concern has been regarding veterans from conflicts that came after WW1.  2019 will mark the 80th anniversary of the start of  WW2 and have we lost the chance to record the stories of those who fought/survived that war too as we concentrated so hard on WW1 for the past 4 years or so. I've also been surprised/annoyed by television programmes talking about the work of the Commonwealth War Graves (among other military issues) that just haven't even mentioned that the CWGC looks after graves from wars other than the Great War...

I don't have any answers to these thoughts and I am well aware that with my projects I have added to this agenda, but I hope that we have (for the most part) tried to work through the myths of the war and to tell new stories. I know that should I get to work on any similar commemoration projects for WW2 that I will certainly be paying more attention to the survivor stories.

Many of these musings have been brought into focus as I read through Neil Oliver's Not Forgotten: The Great War and our modern memory -  a book that I've been dipping into over the past month and whole heartedly recommend, and that I'm pleased to report echoes some of my thoughts even if it couldn't solve my dilemmas either.

Still here

I am still here but it has been a month of a lot of ups and downs, and as seems to be the case post brain hemorrhage the thing that now seems to vanish at these times is my ability to lose myself in a book.

I've been thinking a lot about Remembrance and WW1 over the past few weeks and I did originally intend to post about those today but then the Costa Book Prize shortlists were announced last night...

As is clear to people who read this blog I have really struggled with reading this year and I've read an awful lot less than ever before. I do wonder if this is making me more discerning, and that the list is far more quality rather than quantity.

I say this because two of the books that have been vitally important to me this year have made the Costa shortlists.

The first book that I managed to read all the way through after I fell ill was the wonderful Meet Me at the Museum by debut novelist Anne Youngson. I read it back early in the year, but this was in proof form and so my review didn't appear until late spring. Discovering that I could still read was a really important milestone and I knew that this book was incredibly special to me but to know that others also see this is wonderful, and on a personal level it reinforces that I can still spot a good book!

The Skylarks' War by Hilary McKay marked another landmark in my recovery - it was the first book that I read through in just one day, something I took for granted until December 2017.  There had been other books that I'd read reasonably quickly for the 'new' me but this was the one that I just had to keep reading, that kept my concentration throughout and made a very wet Sunday pass in a flash. (I reviewed this book for the NorfolkinWW1 website where I was much more about the book than the importance it had to me personally).

I'd love for both of these books to go on to triumph in the award ceremonies early in 2019, In the meantime I really do recommend reading both of these books as soon as you can!