War Hero

Today

On Saturday my choir gave a concert of a mixed programme of 17th and 20th century pieces.

Two of the 20th century pieces were setting of poems by, respectively, Edmund Blunden and James Kirkup. There was a curious connection between them. Blunden was a bona fide war poet; he fought in the trenches, knew Siegfried Sassoon and his poetry won much acclaim. Kirkup, by contrast, was a conscientious objector during the First World War.

"Like my Father," I commented to our Music Director.

In My Day

The story of how Daddy was a conscientious objector at the time of conscription during the 1914-18 war was often told in my family. Daddy would describe how he went to court and said "Fight your own bloody war". For which act of defiance he was sent to prison for the duration.

He was imprisoned for about three years, much of it solitary, and he talked about how the experience gave him a lasting difficulty with authority. He told me how he and his fellow-prisoners decided to hold a labour strike one day. When the morning arrived, Daddy refused to work as had been agreed, only discover that every single other prisoner had backed out of the deal. There was a lot of bitterness in the story and he learnt to trust only himself in future.

He said that on the day of release there were soldiers outside who said "they are the real heroes". I don't know how many people at the time would have agreed; many families lost all their male offspring in the war. I also think that, as time went on, Daddy explored more fully his underlying reasons for objecting. Yes, it wasn't a war he could believe in, but he wasn't ever a pacifist and felt strongly that the Second World War needed to be fought. He was a young and vigorous man, just escaping from a dark and dreary past and now he was being asked to throw away all his opportunities and risk a gruesome death for something that seemed to have nothing to do with him.

So he was disinclined to regard himself as a hero; more of a pragmatist, and for many years I hesitated to tell others his story, not being sure whether he would be regarded as a hero or coward and traitor.

Now, of course, with the passage of years, we can take a less extreme view and I can accept his actions with their mixed motives intact.