I was born in England during the Second World War. My Scottish parents were working in a factory
making wings for Spitfires. When that
work ended at the end of the war, we moved to a village east of London called
Chadwell Heath where my father had found work. There we had an apartment over a
butcher shop. Across the street from our
apartment there was a large hole where a building had stood. It had been a
doctor’s home and clinic. Chadwell Heath had been under the flight path of the
V1 flying bombs on their way to London. Their range was determined by an
estimate of the amount of fuel they were filled with. When that ran dry, the
rockets fell to earth and exploded. That meant that some went long and some
fell short, and that was what had happened to the doctor’s house.
In Chadwell Heath, I played with two other boys about my
age. Between the three of us, we had three good eyes, and I had two of
them. Two young boys blinded, possibly for life, one with one eye, one with
none. They had been blinded by flying glass from the explosion at the doctor’s
house.
The reason for this story is to emphasize the toll that is
taken by civilians in wars. We see it today in missile and drone attacks in
Ukraine and bombing attacks in Iran. It
has been a tragedy in ever war ever recorded. Area bombing in World War two,
havoc in the Korean and Viet Nam wars, Afghanistan, anti-colonial wars in
Africa. All had their civilian sufferers. And that’s only in the twentieth
century, a so-called modern civilized era.
In ancient wars between city states for example, the entire population
of the losing side was exterminated or enslaved. There were attempts to limit
the civilian suffering in many eras, but none have ever been truly successful.
War is particularly tragic on children. In many cases, their
injuries will last a lifetime which will usually severely limit their ability
to become productive. Their psychological damage, which can be very severe,
will also last a lifetime. It will either make them scared of every little
bang, or they will grow up seeking revenge from the enemy that caused their
misery. The cycle will go on.
Military personnel get to know what to expect and are able
to defend themselves. Injury and death are part of their profession. But not so
for civilians. I don’t expect future wars to be any different unless we fight
wars with one single military person against another with the winner
determining the outcome. But that will not happen. Breaking the spirit of a
country’s civilian population is too embedded in the military strategy.
Canada has been lucky; it has never experienced a war on our
territory. It does not have a national memory of such damage. Any such memory
comes from immigrants and refugees who have experienced it in their old
country.
Each year we have a Remembrance Day to honour fallen
military people. Each town has a
cenotaph to remember their dead. Why
don’t we have a day of remembrance for civilians who have suffered in war?
