The reason/rational for this is that, from a personal point of view I have been fed so much bullshit, so much – don’t ask, don’t question, just accept what you’re told – that, being now in my 65th year, having a bit of a pig part at heart transplant inside me to keep me going, just about to be drilled out with a small (hopefully very small) food mixer paddle with a camera on the top, I do feel that I have earned the right to ask the question ‘what’s going on?’. Stuff that might bore you to tears but anyway – my father was shot down and killed when my mother was 12 weeks pregnant – her husband (my father for those who think in terms of our c
urrent present attitude to relationships). Him being an RAF reconnaissance pilot flying short winged Spitfires out of Benson in Oxfordshire UK. Mum told me he used to do victory rolls over where me mum lived on his way out to photograph Germany and the occupied territories but not for tourist/holiday snaps but to provide the data for the bomber squadrons – both British and American – to defeat the Hun.
My mother told me that, underneath, my father was a pacifist and so flying air reconnaissance Spitfire - which to enable them to fly at 40/45000 feet didn’t have any guns or protection whatsoever - was his way of dealing with the dilemma of wanting to ‘do his bit’ to do whatever he could but without having to be ‘up and at em’ as I am sure he had heard my maternal grandfather every drunken Christmas describe his experences in the trenches of the First World War and his (my grandfather’s) experience of a mustard gas attack and the reason/excuse for smoking Capstan full strength cigaretts the rest of his (lung cancer terminated) life.
By virtue/reason of the above, I one day told my mum that I thought my dad had been a hypocrite – she hit me good and hard (the one and only time and I deserved it) but my reasoning was that he was passing the buck – he knew why he was taking the aerial photographs, he knew why he had gone out to Florida USA for 12-18 months of blue sky high altitude flying training and it sure as hell wasn’t for travel brochures, it was to photograph the best targets for the UK/USA bomber squadrons to hit, be it military or civilian and to hopefully bring an end to the 3rd Reicht Hitler and everything he represented. It is strange for me, Ian, today that I feel I have more in common with present day Germans than many other groups/cultures in the world.
So, some of you, no maybe most, or should I just say hello to the one reminaing person who’s stuck this far that you and me both, between us can CHANGE THE WORLD.
