Flying up to Italy for the 80th Anniversary of the Italian Armistice that took place on (or about!) 8th September 1943 I was reminded of all the conflicts that had taken place in or around all the cities that kept popping up on my screen when I was checking on how our flight was progressing.
Most notably I had only just been learning that my own father had either passed through Alexandria or certainly close by it. And, just prior to engaging with Rommell and his Panzer Divisions in the Libyan/Egyptian Desert in 1942, leading to his ultimate capture and imprisonment at Fontanellato (PG49) near Parma in 1943.
But then there was also Yalta which immediately conjured up visions of Churchill, Stalin and Roosevelt convening at that conference in 1945 at the end of World War II.
But my mind also took me even further back to the Crimean War. And really, what was that all about? Certainly, something to do with the decline of the Ottoman Empire. But what consequences did that have on the Russian psyche and where we are now?
Lord Tennyson wrote in “The Charge of the Light Brigade”
“’Forward the Light Brigade!’
Was there a man dismayed?
Not though the soldier knew
Someone had blundered.
Theirs not to make reply.
Theirs not to reason why.
Theirs but to do and die.
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.”
And what about our recollections of Beirut. And what were the major factors that kept recurring with all these conflicts? Was it Religion, Oil, Power? What an extraordinary world we live in. And now, especially with Kiev in mind, we seem to just fly on by.
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