Peter Rhodes on crash anxiety, late poppies and the human cost of war
“A really scary experience” was how a Network Rail executive described the train collision in Salisbury. I bet. When we travel by air or road, most of us have a certain anxiety about a crash. But trains are so big, solid and dependable that we never expect anything to go wrong. When it does, “really scary” hardly begins to describe it.
Remarkable, wasn’t it, how many presenters and interviewees on the October 31 edition of Countryfile (BBC1), filmed some days previously, wore poppies presumably supplied by the Beeb? Remembrance gets earlier every year. No-one wants to be branded a late-poppy wearer.
Over the next few days we’ll be bombarded with facts and figures about the two world wars and other conflicts. A few days ago, writing about Harold Macmillan, I came across a sobering statistic about the 1914-18 cataclysm. In 1912 Macmillan went to Balliol College, Oxford. Of his class of 28 students, only he and one other survived the First World War.
You can’t help thinking how our continent might have turned out if the millions of bright young men who should have been governing and working for the countries of Europe had not been slaughtered. There was a common belief at the time that all the talent had been lost while the duffers skulked at home. A survivor of the Somme once told me: “The ones that were left, they weren’t fit to run a whelk stall.”
Nothing, absolutely nothing, excuses the sexual harassment reported at all levels in the British Army, nor the alleged murder by a soldier of a mother in Kenya. However, the chief purpose of any army is to do, when commanded, the most unspeakable and uncivilised things. Once created and encouraged, the macho culture of violence is notoriously difficult to switch off. George Orwell told us: “People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.” We need rough men. We despise rough men. A dilemma with no solution.
Things to do on a rainy day. I finally got around to building a self-assembly draining rack from China (don’t we live well at Chateau Rhodes?). The instructions ended with the advice. “Dry with dry cloth after sticking water to extend the use time.” Goes without saying, doesn’t it?
