Two minutes, Silence

Stubborn. Unable to conform. It used to be like anti-magnetism, dipolar repellence: I really couldn’t join the throng. I couldn’t bear the two-minute silence on Poppy Day. I used to look away, carry on what I was doing, say ‘I have my own silences’ and I did, I do.

But now if I conform – and I do, if I’m out there with people – I’m choked with compassion because that united silence stands for so much. So very much. It’s also symbolic of all that I lack. Bravery. Misfortune. Strength in the face of inhumanity.

Until a disaster strikes we forget the human suffering, the grave and honest detail of death in any family. We too easily forget the very innocence of young men and women who are swept into a labelled box when the media calls them ‘troops’. (Have you ever noticed they say, “50,000 troops have been despatched to war . . .” and then later, “396 men and women died or were injured . . .”.) How many people constitute a troop? Only one.

I was going to place here an excerpt from an account from a prisoner of war (POW) in Germany, to be published in 2006. But hearing today of an ex-soldier’s Post Traumatic Stress Disorder symptoms, which described him as ‘a shadow of his former self, suffering flashbacks, panic attacks and paranoia about strangers’, it’s enough to know this much. And this man was doing it as a career; many of our 1939-45 war veterans had no choice. Young men not long out of school. No surprise, therefore, that men who survived when their friends were tortured and killed in WWII concealed their shocking experiences, some for 40 years and more. They were the lucky ones.

Two minutes silence is all it takes to think in depth about how lucky we are to be so safe today.

Two minutes is all it takes to jot down a thought that will later start an important piece of writing for you.

© Bernie Ross