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This story has been written onto the ´óÏó´«Ã½ People's War site by CSV Storygatherer Pam McCarthy on behalf of Bernard Peters. They fully understand the terms and conditions of the site.

How interesting it is to discover that HMS Scylla sunk in Whitsand Bay for divers to explore was in D Day action off the coast of Normandy in June 1944. In keeping with the run up to June 6th another true war adventure was shown on television. Reminding us of Lionel Crabbe, Britain’s most famous naval frogman, a navy officer who lead his team of frogmen on a dangerous mission. This involved using mini-subs to take explosives into enemy waters, then fixing them to the bottom of ships protected by anti-sub wire nets. The film was ‘The Silent Enemy’. It has been a long time since we first read about it, over 55 years ago. It was pleasing this year that Lionel Crabbe was honoured again. If I remember correctly his nickname was ‘Buster’, Lionel (Buster) Crabbe, after the early 1930’s Hollywood space serial hero.

My generation has never forgotton the First World War, nor the Second. The First because we got it for history at school, and I was shown by my grandfather and father bundles of War Illustrated tuppeny paper, sold in the First World War, full of the Western Front battle scenes, the trenches and the blasted muddied Flanders. These I kept until they yellowed, captivated by looking at and reading the war reports about the ‘Angels of Mons’ and the kilted Highlanders storming the trenches, with satchels of hand grenades, pages of photos of the fallen. What I did notice was that the war reports were always so untruthfully positive. What was really happening was kept from the public. I was disappointed when, many years later, upon showing these magazines to our museum, no-one expressed any interest, other than to say, ‘Why don’t you preserve them in some plastic covers?’ We cannot forget the Second World War, as you can tell by these articles, it was around us. I hope to provide some wartime memories, written 50 years ago. Last year I was surprised by my 50 year old son. He had seen the television programme about ‘Dunkirk’ and what was termed as a miracle. Until then he admitted that he had not known what Dunkirk was all about. There are several allowable excuses. He wasn’t born in the 1940’s and had spent the years schooling. He and his mates enjoying life. Followed by courting, leading into family life, a career, home-making and holidays. This year, 2004, I really felt sad when an older friend of mine said that he has never had any interest in the war. St Nazaire and HMS Cambelltown operation, he had no knowledge of, nor of the Dieppe raid or the Ardennes campaign. How can a man of 60 not want to know of our ‘Citizen Soldiers’ and what they went through? His explanation to me was, ‘I am only interested in trains.’ If a man is a man, a citizen of this country he must be concerned with what goes on; the on-going daily news, what is going on around the world, and when elections come up the duty is to go and vote. John Donne, a 15th century poet and preacher wrote what I think is suitable for this, ‘No man is an island, entire of it self. Every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee.’ (Meditation, XVII).

Some of you will remember Ron Lapham of Cavedras House, now living in Brighton, after a career in Johannesburg. He said to me in December, ‘I follow World War I and II documentaries with great interest and often feel that I was slaughtered and left in the mud of Flanders, to be reborn into this Life. One feels this affinity.’ In those few words Ron summed up much of my feeling and attitude. That is why over the last 40 years my wife and I have made almost yearly pilgrimages to the Somme, to Tyne Cot cemetery, the war areas of Flanders, Normandy and Brittany and as far south as Milano. Omaha and Utah has pulled my seven times. In 2002 with family as we were visiting St Laurent-sur-Mer and Colville-sur-Mer I watched my daughter-in-law waling through the 9,387 GI graves. She was crying. The impact was too much for her. In this same vein I have always felt that I am at one with all men, a part of the whole planet, a feeling of ‘oneness’ with all and wanting to see forward for hundreds of years. To see how mankind turns out. Our search knowledge satisfies us about the past 4-5000 years or more, but it is frustrating not to know that which will be in 5000 years time. Each of us is a world citizen and amongst us are those who mentally are universal men or women, able to be anywhere, with anyone, and not be a fish out of water. Generally speaking our thought processes, in relation to a nearness in intelligence and mental quality, are the same. This was re-affirmed in me in April gone, when out of the blue I came upon the writings of a Spanish intellectual, Miguel Unamuno, and I was delighted to read it and read it again. He wrote ‘The Tragic Sense of Life in Men & Peoples’ and said, ‘I want to be myself, and without ceasing to be myself to be all others as well, to penetrate all things visible and invisible, to extend myself into time, into limitless space and to prolong myself into time without end. If I am not all and for ever, it is as if I were nothing.’ There is a fundamental tragedy in the human condition. We feel a yearning for happiness, and more than happiness, immortality, but we do not have the power to reach it.

So what have I taken a long time to say - I feel for the fallen - I take my hat off to them.

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