What Will VE Day Mean To You?

This week I've been asking a lot of my clients to think about this and it's amazing when pushed what they actually do start to consider. Some initially said 'well I've not really thought about it' or 'not much to be honest, it doesn't affect me'. In every case with a little nagging from me they do start thinking about it. I believe we all should - so I'm asking you what does the 75th anniversary mean to you and should it mean anything at all?

Why should you talk about? It's not about business is it? YES IT IS. This age old ridiculous mantra that you can separate personal experience from business experiences needs to start to fall away, especially now. We are human beings and we cannot cut ourselves into little pieces and just pick and choose the 'bits' which are relevant all the time. One bleeds into the other at one time or another. It's natural. Lockdown will change things. We will see people leaving jobs they hate because this time has taught them that there are other ways, there are other possibilities and you can survive on less cash to be happy. And that's just one prediction I'll make. Another is that there will be a deluge of people suffering with mental health issues. There will be many, many more. Just as there were following the war.

If these men and women had not fought, suffered and many died, you wouldn't have your business like it is today. Our world, our country, our society would be completely different. You may not have the freedoms we take for granted. We may be more bigoted, more racist, more controlled. A world dominated by that would-be tyrant and his allies - how would a great life have come from that? What kind of society would we live in now? Take a time to pause and just be grateful for what we do have, however imperfect. For we stand on the shoulders of those men and women. It's a fallacy to think otherwise.

This commemoration means a lot to me - not because I'm a veteran so I know what it's like entering an arena of real world conflict. Frankly that was never going to be my path. It means a lot to me because being brought up in the 1960s, the Second World War and its impact resonated with me even then. My father was one when the war began, my mum came along in 1943. My grandfathers were both coal miners so they were classed as essential workers so were not called up. Yet war was pretty damned real to them. They had relatives who went to war, they experienced curfews, they experienced financial and food hardship followed by rationing and they experienced bombings and great loss within the family.

My aunt lost her home in a bombing raid in Bath, everything in a moment. There was no insurance, everything was just gone. My grandparents lost their son aged just five from an illness he would probably have survived today - my Uncle Graham who passed away in 1950. My granny was pregnant and with food in short supply, she fed the children she had and the breadwinner putting herself last. Graham was a sickly child from birth, bonny, bright, the apple of his father's eye yet often ill. He died aged five, alone in hospital as my granny was not allowed to be with him. It was cruel, it was painful and she never got over it. For several years, my mum, aged seven when her brother died, lived in fear that her mother, my granny, would take her own life.

In fact not only did my granny never get over it, their marriage never got over it . I grew up with grandparents who were poles apart. They didn't seem to love each other. They seemed to be at war. It all went back to that loss, and in his grief albeit momentarily, my grandad blamed my grandmother for the loss of their son. She never forgave him for that - even though looking back with the eyes of an adult I can see that he was a good, if hard, man. They were together over 60 years, but apart for more than 50 of those years. They simply occupied the same space.

My grandad was a jovial chap, a singer, a boozer, he loved nature and he maintained his love of all of those things. When the war ended, he went around his village in Somerset and surrounding villages banging the big bass drum (he was in the local brass band, very common at the time) letting everyone know. Even now that gets mentioned to us from old-timers. He didn't care what people thought, he had this natural bounce and clearly this need to be 'out there' when the war was over. Of course, communication in those days wasn't what it was today so there was an assumption that not everyone knew.

My granny lost herself in the death of her child. There was no support then, no one to reach out to - you had no choice but to get on with it. Many families had lost too much, too many children had died as the indirect result of war. It was one thing to get pregnant - quite another to maintain that pregnancy and protect that child in a time of war when everything was in short supply. Poverty and war killed my uncle and even now it has trickled its way down through the generations. The way it affected my gran, affected my mum and in turn affected me and my sister. I'm deeply grateful for the freedoms we have today.

Three of my uncles went to war, they all survived and none of them would talk about it. Apart from some minor anecdotes, it was as if they compartmentalised what happened in order to cope - what happened during war stayed there and at home they were something else. To maintain that distance it just wasn't discussed. I know two of my uncles went to war, I've no idea which regiment or even which service they joined, I've no idea what their experiences were and I've no idea about anything like that (maybe one day I'll research it). The only thing I remember with one of them (Uncle Fred) was that one day in Southampton where he lived, sadly a body got snacked on his illegal fishing line (poaching for salmon). He called the police and when asked about it, remember I was very small, I said: "Uncle did you see the body?" and replied "no my love, I didn't need to, when you've smelled death you never forget it.".

My third uncle served in Burma - a member, I think, of the Forgotten Army. I know just two things from that as he passed away when I was 18 and then it was too late to ask him anything. He once marched for six weeks through Burma to take some promised leave to come home, and then had to march back because they'd taken too long. Another was that one day his mates thought it would be funny to remove his bedside light, known as a Kelly lamp I think. from beside his bed in their sleeping quarters. I've no idea why - perhaps they were sick of him getting up early and putting the lamp on. So they moved it away so he couldn't find it. Stumbling in the dark, he did find it eventually and picked the lamp up to light it, only to find a cobra wrapped around the bottom. Had they left it in its usual place, he could have been bitten. He told us that they then got a mongoose to keep the snakes away - I guess they caught one?

Everyone's experience of war would have been different. For my family, not much of it was good, other than the fact that those who actually went to fight did come back, when many did not. We can only reflect based upon our own experiences and those who came before us so I will take a quiet moment on May 8 to remember my uncles and the horrors they endured or faced or were part of to overcome the enemy. I will take a moment to remember my grandparents, now all passed away, who lived difficult, harsh and sometimes cruel lives during those years and later. And the generations before that gave them the resilience to survive.

I hope this day allows us to take a moment to pause and think about what war means - some of which we are experiencing now - and we do all we can to learn the lessons of history. There is no good war, we need to spot the early signs, and do all we can to prevent open conflict where politicians, generals and those who are the decision makers make choices which lead to the deaths of thousands, even millions. When such decisions are made we sow the seeds of later conflict, and, even when we think we are right, the repercussions will sound loudly down through time.

*My grand father's bass drum is now an exhibit at the Radstock Museum, donated to them after his passing in the 1990s.