AN EERIE SILENCE

I started off this year by almost celebrating the fact that it was 50 years ago that I spent  my first year of a 731 day stint doing my National Service.  By `almost,` I mean that it`s by no means certain that the call-up was a matter for celebration either for me or, indeed, for the military.  

As the year has gone on, I have been recalling landmark moments in my military career , most of which were tinged with farce or mediocrity, but one which was as profound an experience as I have ever known.      

Fifty years ago, the armoured regiment which had the pleasure of my enforced company went on gunnery exercises in the Luneburg Heath area and we were `based` not far from the north-west German town of Celle.   In a rare moment of latitude, a couple of friends and I were given a little time to ourselves and we wondered what we might do with it.  I can`t recall why, but we decided on a visit to the Belsen concentration camp, which was not far away.   Given all the other attractions of time to ourselves it was perhaps a surprising decision, but it had the feeling of being `right,` almost like a pilgrimage.

We arrived, had a tour of the gruesome reminders of those horrific and inhuman crimes perpetrated by a horrific and inhuman regime and I recall how subdued we were, as we struggled to take it all in.   But the most telling moment was when we were told that, ever since those appalling times, the birds had never sang or flown over the site.  We stopped, looked and listened and sure enough not a single bird was to be seen or heard.  Eerie....but memorable.

And in this Remembrance Week, whilst we remember those who gave their lives for our freedom, I find it impossible not to remember the eerie silence that shouted out to us on that still day in that dreadful place.   For me, Remembrance Day is one thing but quite another is the sheer impossibility of ever being able to forget what I witnessed and how I felt on that day 50 years ago.