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Rosemary Macmullen: We are right to feel pride and honour them
...this country is at war with Germany".
The shock radio announcement in September 1939 sent my mother into labour and my birth was traumatic and went uncelebrated.
My depressed mother was quite unable to cope and my early years were dominated by the anxiety of world events.
While my sister and I put gas masks on our dolls, my brother led his boyish troops up and down our street shouting "Atten ..shun! Qu..ick march!"
While we played at war, my uncle was on freezing escort duty in the Atlantic, fishing survivors out of the sea. We were lucky that my father was too old for call-up.
I was heartbroken when National Service took my brother off to Malaya in the '50s. The route down Princes Street to Waverley Station was packed with wet-eyed families waving goodbye to the sons, and brothers striding bravely into the unknown. Bagpipes, drums, police on horseback and thousands of flags made it a day to remember.
What a setting with the castle on the Mound and row upon row of marching men.
My mother wept as his jaunty, kilted figure disappeared from view.
I was not expected to show I missed him, so didn't.
We just got on with things and relied on the infrequent letters.
Stoically he wrote of practical matters and did not talk of the day his captain was blown up in front of him, or the pain his own injuries gave him. Information was closely guarded then and no counselling was offered. When he returned he was expected to knuckle down in civvy street and behave himself.
I remember him being reported by a neighbour for firing at tin cans on the wall with an air rifle like a naughty schoolboy.
On my Thursday ramble I admired the military bearing and shiny boots of a fellow walker and remembered the "spit and polish" routine my brother taught me.
As our boots caked with mud my mind went back to the trenches of the First World War and my father-in-law wheezing, his lungs affected by gas.
I wonder was it easier for those at home when no news might be good news, or was fear of the largely unknown a larger fear than the one felt when kept informed.
Today we are bombarded with war news and it is sometimes necessary to switch off feelings in face of such widespread killing.
They were switched on with the homecoming parade for personnel from Iraq and Afghanistan.
Unlike the single-minded purpose of defeating the Hun, reasons for going to war nowadays are complex and hard to understand.
What is unmistakeable and unchanging is the gallantry shown by these armed forces.
What fine people they are, men and women, and to my eyes, so young.
They are indeed heroes and we are right to feel pride and honour them.
3:07pm Thursday 14th February 2008
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