BBC Digital cenotaph

I thought this article was worthy of being mentioned here, especially in view of the 100 year anniversary next year of the start of WW1.

.......The BBC are creating a ‘digital cenotaph’ which will enable family historians, and indeed all those interested, to make a living memorial to the fallen, and help everyone to understand what happened during that time.Basically you will be able to enter your location and then read stories or see clips of WW1 stories from that area.


My grandfather survived WW1 and so, although I saw a request for information for this project ages ago I couldn't contribute because that wasn't what it was all about. In fact I know little about his war experience simply because no one discussed it much, which is why I have also posted about this very subject of not asking questions in another post.

 

I think this was characteristic of men who returned from WW1 - they didn't talk about it. Veterans of WW2 seem to have had tales they could share with their families, but not those from the Great War.

 

That, and perhaps the experiences. Years ago I struck up a conversation with a man sitting next to me on a plane, prompted by a book on WW1 I was reading . He said, 'My father was in the Great War. He never talked about it, but he used to scream in the night.'

Certainly there are/were men who didn't want to talk about WW2, but I get the impression that this applied to far more men who'd survived the earlier war.

 

Two of my wife's uncles were Japanese prisoners of war...and never spoke about their experiences. Despite what they went through, both lived long and full family lives.

 

My father never talked about WW2. When he received his statutory medals through the post after the war he threw them across the room in disgust. He didn't want them. It was suggested he had seen the concentration camps so his reaction wasn't surprising.

 

I remember two ex-colleagues with WW2 experience. One had been in a Japanese POW camp and would never get in a Japanese car or watch a Japanese TV set. Another, a very gentle man (and a gentleman) was given a hard time by some of his pupils. He was heard to say "if only they knew I have killed more men with my bare hands than there are boys in that class" - doesn't bear thinking about.