Cold Hard Reality

This is Ron. He fought with the Cameroonians in Normandy in 1944.

More about him later.

I’ve spent the day at the Cosby Victory Show. And what fun it has been. It’s an airshow that is combined with the amalgamation of a whole of load of Re-Enactment Groups - hundreds of volunteer re-enactors who like to dress up in highly accurate WW2 uniforms, recreating entire platoons and battalions from the war, American, British and German.

They are accurate to the minutest detail – their weapons, their insignia, the vehicles and tanks that they drive – it looks like you’ve landed in the middle of a French field shortly after the invasion at D-Day

The highlight of the day is a massive set piece re-enactment battle involving tanks, troops, weapons, and aircraft.

The battle is – well, frankly, its fun. There are lots of loud bangs and machine gun fire and explosions and tanks moving and pretending to explode and planes flying overhead, and troops shooting at each other and its all rather jolly with the Americans and the British over-running the German trenches and claiming eventual victory.

But it all rings rather hollow when I sit down and chat to Ron and he describes in a whispered voice into my ear about how he saw his best pal Pete have his leg blown off by a mine thrown up by a Churchill tank. “It was just bad luck”. Or as you listen to him describe the awful carnage wreaked on the Germans as they fled through the Falaise gap – “Of course, everyone forgets that their armour was all horse-drawn…. I couldn’t bear seeing all those injured animals – it was almost worse than seeing the dead soldiers…” and his voice chokes off in a half-sob.

And he recounts events that he’s so sickened by that he can only whisper them in my ear – they’re not for public consumption. Not war crimes, nothing more than the cut and thrust of men fighting each other to the death and the damage it causes.

I ask him what he thinks of the re-enactors. He struggles with his reply, clearly trying to remain courteous and polite. “Each to their own, I guess - each to their own”. But I know what he’s thinking.

I leave the show wondering if I will come back. I see things in a new light. Where once there was interest in the re-enactment scene for me, and a fascination with the weapons and the uniforms now there’s nothing. It almost seems like a mockery – and I know that’s not fair because there is merit in seeing living history.

But we’ll never saw the horror these men saw. You can’t re-enact that. We’ve never lost our mates, seen them blown to pieces by our side and had to march on and fight.

Thank God for men like Ron and his friends.

“They ask me where I've been,
And what I've done and seen.
But what can I reply
Who know it wasn't I,
But someone just like me,
Who went across the sea
And with my head and hands
Killed men in foreign lands...
Though I must bear the blame,
Because he bore my name.”