D-Day … plus 80 years … and some thoughts by H G Wells

Ten years ago I wrote the following blog post:

Today marks the seventieth anniversary of the D-Day landings in Normandy. Over the past few days there has been extensive coverage of the events leading up to the landings, and today there will be ceremonies taking place in France and elsewhere to commemorate this anniversary.

There has been much mention of the fact that this will be the last big commemoration of the D-Day landings as the number of veterans is dwindling. Even the youngest of those who took part is in their late eighties, and each year the number grows less. The media has been recording their memories, and at times it has been hard to watch and listen to these old men and women remembering their part in this great enterprise. For a few brief moments they become young again.

On a personal level, one veteran will be missing ... my father. He died just over a year ago, and even whilst the dementia from which he suffered over his last few years was at its worst, his days as a young soldier were still clear in his mind.

My father served with 53rd Airlanding Regiment (Worcestershire Yeomanry), Royal Artillery right up until the end of the War. He was part of the forward observation team and eventually reached the rank of Staff Sergeant. Today, whilst we remember all those who took part in the D-Day landings and the Liberation of Europe, I (and the rest of my family) will be remembering our father and the part he played.

Ten years ago the world seemed to be a less dangerous place than it is today. The number of veterans of the Second World War in general and D-Day in particular are fast dwindling, with most being in their late nineties or centenarians. Perhaps today would it be a good idea for us to remember all those who served during that war, to think of the sacrifices they made, and to pray that today’s conflicts can be concluded as soon as possible so that more lives are not needlessly wasted.

As to my father … my memories of him and my mother (who lived and worked in London during the war and who predeceased him by eleven years) are still as strong today as they were ten years ago, and they will certainly be in my thoughts and prayers on this special day.

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For some reason, whilst I was writing the penultimate paragraph shown above, the words in the concluding chapter of H G Wells’s LITTLE WARS came to mind.

I could go on now and tell of battles, copiously. In the memory of the one skirmish I have given I do but taste blood. I would like to go on, to a large, thick book. It would be an agreeable task. Since I am the chief inventor and practiser (so far) of Little Wars, there has fallen to me a disproportionate share of victories. But let me not boast. For the present, I have done all that I meant to do in this matter. It is for you, dear reader, now to get a floor, a friend, some soldiers and some guns, and show by a grovelling devotion your appreciation of this noble and beautiful gift of a limitless game that I have given you.

And if I might for a moment trumpet! How much better is this amiable miniature than the Real Thing! Here is a homeopathic remedy for the imaginative strategist. Here is the premeditation, the thrill, the strain of accumulating victory or disaster—and no smashed nor sanguinary bodies, no shattered fine buildings nor devastated country sides, no petty cruelties, none of that awful universal boredom and embitterment, that tiresome delay or stoppage or embarrassment of every gracious, bold, sweet, and charming thing, that we who are old enough to remember a real modern war know to be the reality of belligerence. This world is for ample living; we want security and freedom; all of us in every country, except a few dull-witted, energetic bores, want to see the manhood of the world at something better than apeing the little lead toys our children buy in boxes. We want fine things made for mankind—splendid cities, open ways, more knowledge and power, and more and more and more—and so I offer my game, for a particular as well as a general end; and let us put this prancing monarch and that silly scare-monger, and these excitable "patriots," and those adventurers, and all the practitioners of Welt Politik, into one vast Temple of War, with cork carpets everywhere, and plenty of little trees and little houses to knock down, and cities and fortresses, and unlimited soldiers—tons, cellars-full—and let them lead their own lives there away from us.

My game is just as good as their game, and saner by reason of its size. Here is War, done down to rational proportions, and yet out of the way of mankind, even as our fathers turned human sacrifices into the eating of little images and symbolic mouthfuls. For my own part, I am prepared. I have nearly five hundred men, more than a score of guns, and I twirl my moustache and hurl defiance eastward from my home in Essex across the narrow seas. Not only eastward. I would conclude this little discourse with one other disconcerting and exasperating sentence for the admirers and practitioners of Big War. I have never yet met in little battle any military gentleman, any captain, major, colonel, general, or eminent commander, who did not presently get into difficulties and confusions among even the elementary rules of the Battle. You have only to play at Little Wars three or four times to realise just what a blundering thing Great War must be.

Great War is at present, I am convinced, not only the most expensive game in the universe, but it is a game out of all proportion. Not only are the masses of men and material and suffering and inconvenience too monstrously big for reason, but—the available heads we have for it, are too small. That, I think, is the most pacific realisation conceivable, and Little War brings you to it as nothing else but Great War can do.