With Remembrance Day soon upon us, we are turning our thoughts to those that gave their lives, so we could live ours. To keep their memory alive, we asked some of our authors to share their stories, and the stories of loved ones who have passed, this Remembrance Sunday.
Read on to hear Roseanna Rolph, Matt Graydon, and DJG Palmer’s thoughts on Remembrance Day…
Roseanna Rolph, author of Dear Mr Snippet
“In my primary school years, I was set a project to write a biography of someone I knew. I chose my grandfather, and during one of our conversations he presented me with the hip flask he believed had helped to save his life when he was hit in a shell attack during WW2. This was to become a treasured object of mine; a touchstone that linked the experiences that he spoke of to a day and time in history, providing me with an opportunity to question and imagine.
Years later, whilst piecing together his and my grandmother’s story for Dear Mr Snippet, my understanding of his experiences grew. I began to recognise the importance of recording and sharing these stories, the different snapshots and snippets of their daily lives revealing some of what it was like to live through WW2. As time moves on, I believe it is important that these stories are not forgotten and do not fade, so that when we no longer have those who can talk about it firsthand, future generations still have opportunity to create their own understandings.
Since writing Dear Mr Snippet, my perceptions and feelings around Remembrance Day have deepened and intensified, and this year I will march with young cadets to my town’s war memorial and stand by their side to honour those who have played their part.
I will give thanks that my grandfather was able to return, and that I had the opportunity to know him. I will think of the snippets of stories he recorded in his letters and diaries, his troop and comrades, and all those who – through actions both big and small – enabled our freedom. They were the miracle, and it will be for them that I wear my poppy.“
Matt Graydon, author of Leaving Fatherland
“Remembrance Sunday honours the dead from all wars right through to the present day and is always draped in great patriotism with politicians and Royalty joining together to bond the nation in a show of support for ‘our boys and girls’ in the British armed forces. As the Royal British Legion put it: “We unite across faiths, cultures and backgrounds to remember the service and sacrifice of the Armed Forces community from United Kingdom and the Commonwealth.”
In my own reflections at this time, I have always been a little unusual. As the familiar notes of the last post ring out, my thoughts are always around my own family members who fought on land, at sea and in the air during the World Wars, including one who was German. I spent much time considering the experiences of my Uncle Werner growing up, inspired by the storytelling of my recently deceased mother. Mum had sat with Werner, a former PoW and Luftwaffe camera operator on a Junkers 88, at her father’s Lincolnshire dinner table, alongside my Aunty Mary, a conscientious objector, twice imprisoned for refusing to make bombs and my Uncle Roland, an officer on Algerine class minesweeper HMS Rifleman. Her stories helped me understand that war was not black and white and that those involved often found themselves on different sides through political belief systems imposed upon them.
When I wrote my novel, Leaving Fatherland, which includes scenes based on Werner’s experiences, and is written entirely from a German perspective, I wanted to examine human motivations during wartime and the familial and moral dilemmas this creates. On Remembrance Sunday this year, I shall continue to honour the memories of all those forced to fight in wars in which they did not believe.“
DJG Palmer, author of the Babanango trilogy and advocate for the Fighting With Pride LGBTQ+ veterans’ charity.
“For many of my generation, the topic of Remembrance evokes images of the First and Second World Wars, our grandparents, and thoughts of those few who survive today.
With the 80th anniversary of D-Day so recently behind us, the imagery of twentieth century conflict lingers in our consciousness. Today, focus is shared with the contributions of BME personnel from across the British Empire, now the Commonwealth, the role of women, and of the Eastern European refugees, particularly airborne, who defended Britain after their own countries had been overrun. I think also of the ‘Royal Wooton Bassett’ generation, many those born after me who have died in Iraq and Afghanistan since my own peacetime service.
This year, my thoughts will go to those whose sacrifice was uncelebrated and unrecognised down the ages, those of the poorest backgrounds of any nation, for whom conscription or enlistment through socio-economic hardship was unavoidable. Equally, the survivors among us today, those who risked much beyond their youth, their physical and their mental health to serve their country from 1967 to 2000, when the ban on LGBTQ+ personnel was still in force. Imprisoned, dismissed, stripped of medals and pensions regardless of how good a soldier, sailor or airperson they were or might have become, The Etherton Ribbon Survivors make up an increasingly visible, wronged but dignified branch of the UK veteran community.
So, this Remembrance Sunday, I shall stand proud beside LGBTQ+ personnel, retired and serving, many of whom still campaign for reinstatement of basic entitlements. I shall be thinking of The Shot At Dawn Campaign, whose forebears’ mental health was shattered, and who were condemned and executed for what we now recognise as post-traumatic stress disorder. I will look for representation of The Windrush Generation, and those of Polish, Czech and other European descent, whose grandparents and great grandparents fought on for Britain when their own war was lost, and for all those who gave “their today” never knowing what “tomorrow” their sacrifice would buy.
My Remembrance is a rainbow as well as a poppy, those who make up its spectrum today, and those who have done so down the ages. People we may now recognise and salute in equal measure.“
This Remembrance Day, we remember and thank all those that gave their lives, so we could live ours.
