Mara's Musings

I feel I have been privaleged to have a father who brought me a perspective of the war "from the other side".  It has certainly instilled in me a distaste for the pointless loss of life on both sides and also an understanding that "the enemy" is actually a group of human beings with the same fears, thoughts, hopes and aspirations as our own.

My father had no love for Mussolini and certainly no wish to fight in the war.  He was conscripted just before going to college to complete a qualification which, had he obtained it, would probably have changed the course of his life and the loss of that is something he still feels pretty angry about.  As he is keen to point out, he had no hatred of the British in fact most of the people he served with hated Hitler as much as the British did!  There was no such thing as a conscientious objector in Italy.  If you didn't fight you got shot.

My Dad is now 92 but he will still remember the stories of poor equipment, winter conflicts wearing summer uniforms, no boots and so on.  Sound familiar?  Mostly he rants about the German officers whose policy (according to my Dad) was to send them in first, take the area and then when they ran off left them to cover the retreat. He also speaks about the day of his capture and the relief that it was the British because "we knew the British would treat us good".  Out of his entire regiment there were only about 30 or so left, he considers himself lucky to have survived.  He ended up on a farm in the Isle of Wight where he met my mum, returned here after the war and eventually became a British citizen.

So, as we remember the British war dead today, let us also spare a thought for the soldiers of the opposing armies who also died.