by Hazel Anna Rogers for the Carl Kruse Blog
It was VE Day on Thursday the 8th of May. VE stands for Victory in Europe. 80 years it has been since the formal acceptance by the WWII Allies of Germany’s unconditional surrender on Tuesday the 8th of May, 1945. 80 years it has been, and the world is still at war today.
By sheer coincidence, I watched a WWII movie on VE Day; ‘Atonement’, directed by Joe Wright. It is a sad film. Films about wars are often sad, because many people die. Two of the three protagonists in ‘Atonement’ die. So it goes.
The WWII film I acted in is coming out this year. It is set during The Battle of the Bulge; the last major German Offensive, situated in the forests of the Ardennes, Belgium.
I researched extensively in preparation for the film. It was bleak in Belgium in the 1940s. Belgians lost an average of 5-7kg in 1940 due to food scarcity caused by the German occupation. Their rations totalled some 1,200-1,500 calories per person. The amount of food that Belgians were allowed was amongst the lowest in occupied Europe.
I found a piece of writing from around that time. It was written by a girl living on a farm in Belgium, and I was going to play a girl living on a farm in Belgium, so I read this piece of writing many times before I flew out to the mountains of Bulgaria to shoot the movie. I have translated it (albeit poorly) into English from its original French.
‘Life has continued, albeit according to very strange terms and conditions dictated by the Nazi regime. They came to measure the fields that we cultivated, told us what crops we were to grow, and told us how much of those crops, if any, we were permitted to keep for ourselves. They counted our chickens and told us how many eggs we were expected to give them.
As you can imagine, we experienced some shortfalls according to their estimations, and in these circumstances, my father had to make up the difference through the Black Market. It was a dangerous thing to do.
We had two pigs, one to fatten up while the other was butchered. I remember that we managed to hide a pig so we could use it to feed ourselves.
The family cow kept the regime and my family fed with our quota of milk. I remember many evenings spent rocking the butter churn next to the stove, and though I don’t remember us having been permitted to keep much butter for ourselves, the buttermilk was relished by me and my siblings.’
This piece of writing brings back some of those wistful childhood fantasies of living in the wild, like Robinson Crusoe or Huckleberry Finn, living off the fat of the land and braving the fiery storms with nothing but a piece of hard bread and a handful of berries. I remember when I was little at school we’d have days where we dressed up as refugees during World War II. I remember that we thought it’d be fun to be a refugee, or even just to be poor, because it’d be like a game to try and survive. I played many games like that when I was little. Me and my sister would hide out in my grandmother’s shed and I’d go out into the ‘snowstorm’ (the sunny garden) to collect ‘provisions’ (biscuits) for my ‘baby’ (my twin sister). I think lots of children play games like these. The little boy I nanny also likes to play games like these. But, when I think about it, I don’t think it was probably very fun at all in real life, back then, to be bundled up with a suitcase and sent away, or to be torn from one’s bed by a man with a gun and a sneer. And I sit and think of the refugees today. And I sit and think it must be like a nightmare.
Anyway. VE Day.
You know, I watched another war movie last night. ‘The Zone of Interest’ by Jonathan Glazer. It was different to ‘Atonement’ because it was unsentimental. It was terrible just because it was, not because it told you that it was. Something about the low drone permeating the walls of the film, and the towering fences of Auschwitz – they didn’t need to tell you it was terrible. How did these things happen? And how are they happening now? These are questions I cannot answer.
I am, informally, a Buddhist. This means that I am a pacifist. I think most religions preach pacifism. But you can turn the words around so it sounds like you can sometimes kill and hurt. I have hurt many times before because I felt it justified, but now when I think about those times that I hurt others, when I think on it in the dead of night, I find it difficult to sleep. I spoke to my friend about it yesterday. I told him that I was not a good person for a long time.
VE Day reminds me of the importance of trying to be a good person. VE Day is a reminder of the fickleness of life and the pointlessness of violence. They fought, and fight, for a man behind walls, on the end of a telephone line, his hand hovering over a button, or a map, or a glass of expensive whisky. All the more love have I for the ones before, back in the years of Atonement, or The Zone of Interest, and all the more love have I for the ones forced into war, and for the ones whose minds have been eaten away by hate without them knowing it.
My grandfather was in the war. He’s dead now. He died when I was tiny, and I can’t tell whether I remember his face or if I’ve created false memories through photos I’ve seen of his face, of him sitting in a chair watching me as a toddler crawling about.
My grandfather survived the war. He was part of the ‘War Abroad’, and somehow, by luck or simply smart decisions, never found himself on the frontlines of battle. His name was Bill Rogers, and he first volunteered in 1940. His first posting was to High Ercall Aerodrome, where he trained as an aircraft technician. His commanding officer was Max Aitken, later Lord Beaverbrook, a close friend of Winston Churchill.
In 1942, Bill was posted overseas. It took him 3 months to get to Iraq.
By this time, Bill was a fervent member of the communist party. As a result of his being outspoken to his commanding officer about conditions in the camp in Iraq, Bill was forcibly transferred to Tehran. While in Tehran, he learned to ski in the nearby mountains, where the infamous Haile Selassie was visiting the Shah of Persia.
Due to his continuous complaints about the food served at the camp, Bill was placed in charge of the canteen. Owing to the canteen’s lack of fridges, and thus its tepid alcohol, Bill took to arranging for pilots to take up crates of beer in their aircraft and fly up as high as possible to ensure the beer became icy cold. As you can imagine, Bill was especially popular with the other men, but less so with his commanding officer.
Bill moved through Libya, Jordan, and Gaza – where he was photographed sunbathing – then onto Ethiopia, and finally Yemen. The war ended, and Bill came home and worked for the General Post Office. He became an electrician for the GPO, then won some money in the football pools and started his photographic business, and so on, and so forth. And his memories fell from his mouth to his wife, my grandmother, and onto his children, including my father, and onto me, here now, writing away.
I told this story to my friend, in a little more detail than I have afforded to you. He listened quietly while I recounted it all, then he said he hadn’t thought about the fact that some people, through luck or simply smart decisions, might have managed to while away the years of wars, coming out the other end relatively unscathed, with strange fantastical stories to tell. But it makes sense. About a third of all men in the UK went to fight in WWII. Over 5 million of them. Worldwide, over 127 million men and women were mobilised. There were always bound to be some who ended up okay when all was said and done.
I spoke to a person I know about his time in the army. He told me he’d killed people. I couldn’t tell if he thought I’d find it impressive, because he said it like he’d thought I would, but I didn’t. Then he said that, after everything, there’s still a feeling in him that he and the others he fought with were duped into joining the army. That they’d been tricked in some way. That it all seemed futile.
This is it. This is it. The futility. I am sat here and bombs are dropping over there. I am sat here and there is more fighting on the horizon. I am sat here, and we have learned nothing. I am sat here and my grandfather, who saw the tail end of The First World War, that which we call ‘Great’, and who drifted through World War II in lands unbeknownst to me, is rolling in his grave.
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The Carl Kruse Blog Homepage is at https://www.carlkruse.com
Contact: carl AT carlkruse DOT com
Other articles by Hazel include Godspeed David Lynch and the Letters That Made Me.
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