I’ve been trying to get my head round this photograph, taken on Fleet Street, London in 1944, with smoke from a nearby German V1 bomb belches out smoke. Talk about ‘keep calm and carry on’ because that’s exactly what this appears to be, as people get on with their lives as the madness of war carries on around them. Were the people simply used to the frequent Luftwaffe attacks, accepting they were a regular feature of their lives? Probably, because the bombing went on for years. Or were they all incredibly brave, too, refusing to bend in the face of the fascist foe? I reckon quite a lot of that.
Here in Bristol, my grandad, already far too old to be called up to serve, went around the empty streets of Bristol for years, telling people to “put that light out”, the British/Norwegian Mr Hodges from Dad’s Army. My dad, at 15, was already at sea, serving on the Liberty Ships. My mum, at 21, had along with her parents and brother already lost everything on 14 May 1940 when Germany destroyed the centre of Rotterdam, their apartment included.
My mum, the then Neeltje Verburg, had seen, as a 17 year old girl, things you would never want to see, like Dutch marines being and shot and killed just down the road. Later, she saw Jews rounded up to be taken to the so-called transit camp at Westerbork, only to be then taken to Auschwitz-Birkenau, Sobibor and other killing centres and concentration camps, never to return.
While they were not Jews, mum’s father, Marinus, was often approached by German officers. “Your name,” they would assert, “is Jewish. Verburg.” And they’d leave him alone. Somehow, he wasn’t scared, but he loathed the Germans, all Germans, as that generation did.
Were they part of a golden generation who showed bravery and fortitude today’s generation – and obviously I include me in that – could never hope to emulate? It certainly feels like it. I don’t think I could have done what Anthony Johansen did, volunteering to serve on ships across the North Atlantic that were vulnerable to deadly German U Boats and I’d have probably had a meltdown when the Germans flattened and then occupied the Netherlands. I have enough difficulty in navigating my way through life in peacetime, never mind in war.
And yet I am drawn to this photograph, over and over again. It appears that the bowler-hatted men in the background may be looking at the smoke rising, but there is no indication of panic. The women appear to be almost relaxed as they climb off the back of the bus. Perhaps, they actually are relaxed. Even if there was an explanation for the way they appear, I could not admire them anymore.
How anyone could look at that photo and not think, I hope that never happens again, I don’t know? We look around the globe, in Ukraine, in Gaza and in so many other places and it looks like the world has gone crazy or that it’s just about to go crazy.
Of course, if we ever go to war again, it won’t look like Fleet Street in 1944. The bombs could be nuclear, not conventional, and if they were, the streets, or what would be left of them, would be deserted. The only places we could keep calm would be in shelters and even then for how long? It was hard to enough to rebuild after World War Two, let alone a nuclear war. In the case of the latter, what was destroyed would stay destroyed and uninhabitable.
It’s as true today as it ever was that we must learn from the past and make sure we never make the same mistakes. Yet in so many places around the world, it looks like we never learn. Russia is ruled by a dangerous dictator and even countries like the Netherlands they have voted for a far right populist, Geert Wilders, and put him within a short distance from real power. You know, the Netherlands, land of my mother that was captured by the far right. And even here, the heirs to Oswald Mosley like Nigel Farage and co, preach a version of what our forefathers fought against.
The photo at the top of this blog should remind us of who we are and what we stand for and how we are not going to let the fascists win. We owe that not just to ourselves, but to those who fought for the freedoms we cherish today, not least the people who kept calm and carried on. Because there is always someone who wants to take them away. Don’t let them.
