This essay is different from the ones I usually publish. It’s a lot more personal, and a lot less light-hearted and humorous. It tells the story of my family, that is of people near and very dear to me which I usually keep out of the limelight in my public writing. As a matter of fact, I’ve pondered for quite a while whether I should tell this story at all. It demanded to be written and published, though, so here we are…
When I look around these days, both on the internet and in real life, I see a lot of people egging on war. They want to drop bombs on this or that person, on this or that place or region. They clamor for boots on the ground in whichever country they think is worth invading for their noble (and sometimes not so noble) cause. They celebrate attacks and killings, or vociferously call for them. They demand the destruction of vital infrastructure just because it hurts the other side more. Or they think that “we” (their side, i.e. the good guys) should just drop some nukes on the other side and be done with it.
Mind you, I’m not talking about the politicians, about the people in power, or the ones advising them. I’m also not talking about the media pundits, the news anchors, or the important influencers on social media or elsewhere. And I’m not talking about the people with influence, whether their influence extends to the open stage or is doing its thing behind the scenes.
I don’t harbour the illusion that those people might read this essay, and much less that they might reflect on it and maybe question their thoughts, their speech or their action.
No, the people I’m talking about are “normal” people, just like you and me. I’m talking about the people who comment on websites and social media. The people who rant to their neighbours, colleagues or friends about the prospects of war. The people who excitedly plan for yet more war at the dinner table.
Mind you, these are normal people: upstanding citizens, treasured and beloved parts of their families and their circles of friends, valued members of churches and clubs, reliable workers and employees. In fact, this could very well be you – or me.
And again, I don’t harbour any illusions about reaching any of them. Of the few people who are going to read this essay, even fewer will reflect on it – and those are, most likely, the ones who need it the least.
Still, I have a story to tell, whether it reaches anybody or not. It’s the story of my family…
My maternal grandfather was the youngest of twelve. Born at the tail-end of the First World War in Germany into a poor family in the countryside, he lost both his father and his oldest brother in the last throes of that war. His mother somehow managed to not just feed her remaining children and to raise them to adulthood (minus two or so who didn’t survive their childhood, as was common back then). All of them, every single one, also became decent, much-beloved people, well-integrated in their community, and with solid jobs.
How my great-grandmother managed to even feed and cloth all of them in the aftermath of the First World War, through inflation and everything else, on hardly any income, just with a garden and her two hands, is beyond me. But grandpa never forgot the harsh lessons of his childhood and youth – up to his very end, he took care of a large garden and an even larger orchard, as he knew that if push should ever come to shove again, at the very least there’d be some food on the family table and apples to sell.
My maternal grandmother was the oldest of three, born into yet another not very well-off family in the same German village. During the Second World War, she was drafted into the Reich Labour Service for women. Her last assignment, towards the end of that war, was in what is now the French town of Strasbourg, which belonged to Germany back then, where she performed auxiliary tasks together with the other young women of her group.
In November 1944, however, everything changed very fast: The Allied forces overran the German army and entered Strasbourg. Everything was a mess on the German side – party officials fled over the Rhine, leaving soldiers and support personnel behind to somehow scramble to safety on their own, and the established structures of the German army and bureaucracy in and around the town rapidly broke down.
My grandma and the other girls got out in the nick of time, by divine grace (or sheer luck), right before the Allied forces conquered Strasbourg, and only because some of the German soldiers had the presence of mind to run by the girls’ living quarters in a rush, urging them to flee now by whatever means possible, and because some kind souls offered them a place in one of their vehicles. Otherwise they’d have been left behind to fend for themselves.
Granny almost never talked about the war – she told me this story of her last-second escape from Strasbourg just once. But until the end of her life, she was deadly afraid of thunder and lightning.
My paternal grandfather was a Sudeten German from a region which now belongs to the Czech Republic, close to Poland. His family was dirt poor, and he and his dad had to work as mariners on boats on the river Elbe, which ran by their small town. During the Second World War, grandpa was drafted into the German army, and by some weird stroke of fate he happened to visit the widow of one of his fallen comrades to tell her about her late husband’s fate, because he had promised said comrade to do so.
I’d love to say that the two of them fell wildly, madly in love with each other during his visit, but going by what dad told me, it was probably more a case of two lost and traumatized souls finding comfort and solace in each other’s arms. Still, a child was conceived, but by the time my dad was born, my grandpa had long been back at the war front.
The two of them stayed in touch, though – apparently, grandpa was a decent guy at heart, and wouldn’t drop his fling and their child like a hot potatoe. By divine grace (or sheer luck), he returned from the war despite a head shot which had cost him an eye and would continue to cause him trouble throughout his few remaining years.
Shortly afterwards, the Sudeten Germans were forced out of their homes, their towns, and out of Czechia in a rush. Adrift, and having lost everything, he settled at my grannie’s place. The two of them married, and he adopted my dad, his son, and also took care of the two children from granny’s first marriage with his fallen comrade.
While this might sound like the beginning of a “happily ever after”, I’m afraid there is no happy ending to his story, though… Grandpa’s parents, also being forced to flee their house and home and their meager belongings, ended up in what was later to become Eastern Germany. As far as I know, he saw them again only once before the iron curtain closed. Grandpa himself continued to have health issues – and not just with his physical health.
Dad told me that his father was a decent person and a good man at heart, but that he had suffered heavily from the war and its aftereffects and thus wasn’t always easy to deal with, to put it mildly. I guess that nowadays, we’d say he had PTSD. Grandpa died a few years later, while my dad was still a child, from some complication of his battlefield injuries.
My paternal grandmother, the widow with the two prior kids, was herself born into a not well-off (and sizeable) family here in my home village, and also at the very tail end of the First World War. As a young woman, she moved to the nearby town of Pforzheim, just a few miles from here as the crow flies, behind the ridge of a hill.
Back then, Pforzheim had a prolific industrial basis, and thus a lot of people from our village used to work there, either by commuting into town with the bus, or by moving there and living in town. Some were employed in the various factories and workshop. Others, like granny, worked as maids and servants for well-off middle class families.
After losing her first husband and giving birth to my dad, having two young kids and a newborn to care for, she moved back to her home village with the children, despite the shame of a baby born out of wedlock. And by divine grace (or sheer luck), she did so shortly after dad’s birth in December 1944, and thus before February 23rd, 1945.
For on that day, the Royal Air Force bombed the town of Pforzheim, causing a firestorm which killed a third of the town’s population and reduced very large parts of it to ashes and rubble, including the house in which the family had lived before. Even decades later, everybody here in the village vividly remembered how the sky was lit up that night, from the town behind the hill engulfed in flames.
The years right after the war were equally harsh on granny. The family didn’t have enough to eat, despite having a garden, and the fact that her then-husband, my grandpa, was both war-handicapped and had his own issues to deal with certainly didn’t help. Still, they somehow made do, but barely.
Granny carried the invisible scars of those years with her until her death in old age, though, decades after she had to bury the second of her two husbands. For his burial, and despite still being reasonably young herself, she chose a double grave for two people – after all she had encountered during and between two major wars, there seemed to be no hope left for living into an old age herself.
My dad, in turn, still remembered those hunger years right after the war very vividly up to his end. He was little more than a toddler when his stomach hurt so much at night from going hungry that he got up, snuck into the kitchen, and ate some raw potatoes because that was the only thing available – giving himself a stomach ache and, if I remember correctly, the one and only thrashing he ever received from his dad, but even worse: making his mom cry so hard because he had eaten part of what was supposed to be the family’s meal for the next day (and, I suppose, also from desperation because she couldn’t feed her kids).
Dad and his two older half-siblings went hungry and without breakfast so often that sometimes the wife of a local baker, a distant relative of theirs, gave each of them a small roll on their way to school and kindergarden in the morning, so they’d at least have something to eat at all before lunch. Decades later, my dad still remembered the sheer and raw physical pain of being hungry.
This is the story of my immediate family, but of course, there’d be more stories to tell…
Maybe the story of my husband’s grandpa who went missing in Stalingrad, leaving behind his wife and two little twin girls who never learned what happened to him.
The story of the wardrobe with the deep mark which we inherited from my mother-in-law, the mark which was struck by some chip of an artillery shell hitting their home from a combat nearby. By divine grace (or sheer luck), none of the people inside were hit.
Or the story of the Allied soldiers roaming through my home village when the war was more or less over, about girls being dragged out of their family’s basements where everybody had sheltered, only to return a few hours later, disheveled and crying.
Just for the records, though, I don’t claim that my parents, my grandparents and their parents had it harder than others, quite the contrary! What they experienced was just the normal wear and tear of one or two major wars, nothing out of the ordinary, and nothing particularly cruel or gruesome. And after all, all of my grandparents at least survived the war, albeit not all of them unscathed.
I’m also sure that almost everybody with ancestors in Europe during the two World Wars has similar stories to tell, as have people with ancestors in a lot of other parts of the world which experienced wars not too far back. And there are other war-torn places where people have experienced just these same things themselves until very recently, or are experiencing them right now.
War is a hellish business, folks.
It’s not something to be taken up lightly, or to be done for fun. It’s not a video game where you can simply start over when you die. It’s not a movie where the “good guys” always win – if there even are any good guys in a war, that is.
War is not something you want to start without very seriously considering all other options first – after all, once a war is started, you never know when it will end, and how.
War is a gruesome thing which hurts everybody involved, the people fighting it just as much as the people suffering through it.
Now, I’m not naive. I know that people have what they believe are very good reasons to call for war, and that countries (or rather: the ruling classes of countries) have what they believe are very good reasons to start one, or to get involved in one.
I know that sometimes war seems to be a necessity. Sometimes aims can’t be achieved otherwise. And sometimes war is brought upon you by somebody else who doesn’t leave you much choice.
I also know that there are circumstances under which I, personally, might find a war justified (or at least necessary) – and as I’m just human like all the rest of us, I’m afraid there might also be circumstances where I’d clamor for war out of rage or fear.
I’m aware, too, that some regions and countries haven’t experienced a major war on their own soil for a very long time, if ever. And with the memory of war as a lived experience fading, or never having existed in the first place, it becomes easier to call for war as a solution to whatever problems one might want to solve – especially if said war is going to take place elsewhere.
Still, war is a hellish, gruesome business which hurts everybody involved. It’s not a game, and it’s not to be taken up lightly.
If you should ever find yourself to be clamoring for war, to be calling for the bomb to be dropped onto a certain place or certain people, to argue that “we should simply shoot them all and be done with it”, my hope is that you will remember the story of my family.
And remember, too, that even if the war you start or join might be elsewhere, one day the bombs of war, of this one or another one, might hit closer to your own home, and the fighting might take place on your own soil – and if you’re lucky, your grandchildren will live to tell your story.
Image: Rod Long on Unsplash
Marko Mulej says
Thank you for this!
I remember some stories my grandparents told me. I do doubt they would have much sympathy with germans, my grandma was even in a concentration camp. But here is a thing, by all accounts she was not treated that badly, the german farmers were actually protecting her as a 14 year old girl.
“My dad, in turn, still remembered those hunger years right after the war very vividly up to his end. He was little more than a toddler when his stomach hurt so much at night from going hungry that he got up, snuck into the kitchen, and ate some raw potatoes because that was the only thing available – giving himself a stomach ache and, if I remember correctly, the one and only thrashing he ever received from his dad, but even worse: making his mom cry so hard because he had eaten part of what was supposed to be the family’s meal for the next day (and, I suppose, also from desperation because she couldn’t feed her kids).”
This hit like a truck. Ever since reading the history books with a bit of reflection, it is intellectually obvious that the germans suffered. But you give it all a face.
A bitter gift, but I thank you.
I will go hug my wife and kid now.
Best regards,
Marko
Regine says
Hey Marko,
Thanks a lot for sharing this story!
I doubt many Germans had much sympathy with people from certain other nations during that war either – but is the lack of sympathy, or maybe: of empathy, not a part of what wars are made of (and what enables them)? And with this, I mean a lack of sympathy in general, i.e. even before or outside of any lived personal experiences like your grandmather had. But then on the other hand, general non-empathy aside, there are small personal acts of kindness to be found in any war, just like your grandma experienced them… Humans are weird and complex critters, aren’t we? 🙂
Yes, the Germans (as in: the ordinary people) suffered, and badly. But so did most everybody else in Europe. War is hellish on everybody involved, and it would serve us well not to forget that.
Please give them a hug from me, too!
Regine
Mike says
Hi Regine,
thanks for this. My family, being from Berlin, have some stories that rhyme with what you’ve shared. I also had some quite unpleasant experiences witnessing violence while spending a weekend in Belfast as a boy in the late 70’s. I can’t really tell whether my lifelong fascination with martial arts and military matters is a coping strategy or something innate to me.
I seem to recall that in the Orphic Hymn to Mars it says that He revels in the slaughter, so there seems to be an aspect of the divine mystery at play. On the level of lived human experience it feels more like an evil spirit preying on humans, lapping up those emotional energies of hatred and confusion.
While we live through the crescendo of these times I hope to contribute a teaspoon full to those forces of coherence and cohesion that keep the world from going to pieces. Blessing a butterfly here, smiling at someone there, while trying to hold my own anger as the frightened child it really is.
All the best to you.
Mike
Regine says
Hi Mike,
Thanks for sharing. Yes, it‘s the same story everywhere, and through all ages, isn‘t it?
Your lifelong fascination could also be both, you know… 😉
Interesting that you should mention this hymn. I‘ve always felt that it is an outlier among the Orphic hymns, and especially among the planetary ones. Other than the others, it doesn‘t praise Mars‘ virtues, his benefits and strong points (which he definitely has), but is trying to mold him into something he isn‘t. Or at least it seems to be that way on the surface… Lots of fodder for meditation there!
Thanks for contributing said teaspoon,
Regine
Aldarion says
Thank you for these moving stories! A story a bit similar to your father’s and his father’s is told in this book (only in German): https://www.amazon.de/Mit-blauen-Augen-Albrecht-Gralle/dp/3842514778
Regine says
Hi Aldarion,
You‘re very welcome, and thanks for this!
Regine
thinking-turtle says
Thanks for sharing! I’m from the Netherlands, and such stories run in my family too. Your family’s story of the child sneaking to the kitchen to steal raw potatoes is almost identical to mine. My family was bombed by both Germans and Allies.
The Netherlands seems to have been spared the dragging of girls from basements. From what I read, the Germans kept Dutch society mostly intact, and so did the Allies when they came.
Regine says
Hi thinking-turtle,
Thanks a lot for sharing the story of your family. I‘m fairly sure that similar stories run in families all over Europe (and, for what it‘s worth, probably in families all over the world), and I think it‘s very valuable to share them.
War does the same horrible things to everybody, friend or foe, „good“ guys or „bad“ guys alike – and it‘s all the more important, very enlightening, and also very sobering, to be aware of this.
Regine
Valerie says
Thanks for sharing your story, Regine. Wow. As Americans, my family has been spared this, with the exception of a great grandfather who was injured in our Civil War. My uncles who fought overseas in WWI and WWII didn’t talk much about it. Our Dutch relatives, I was told, managed to stay in touch with their Dutch kin here from the 1850s onward. Then came WWII, and that connection was severed. I can guess why, but will never know for sure. The uncle who served in Korea was so traumatized that he swore that if the government ever came for his sons, he would drive them across the Canadian border himself. At this point in my life, I completely agree that the distinction between “good” guys and “bad” guys is childish. How I wish Polymarket and its ilk would vanish. It saddens me that so many of us seem to view the world as a video game. It isn’t.
I’m glad your family made it through those appalling times. Who knows? You may be providing inspiration for those of us who may face something similar someday.
🙏
Valerie
Regine says
Hi Valerie,
And thank you very much for sharing your family’s story, too!
Indeed, in some rare countries like the US, most people/families have been spared experiencing the actual effects of war, apart from some soldier uncles or the like, as in your case. In some ways, of course, this is great – and I most certainly don’t wish a war on you or your country! But in other regards, it’s difficult, as it makes some people gung-ho for war without knowing what they (and everybody else) is getting into.
(As an aside, I’ve come to be of the opinion that there is something to be said for the old-fashoined style of going to war, where the chieftain or lord or whomever was boss and thus responsible for starting it leads their army from the front… Going back to that would certainly sharpen some minds in certain circles… 😉 )
Seeing the world as a video game makes people more short-sighted when it comes to shouting for war (and I’m aware I did use this in my essay 😉 ). I’m not sure if it’s a driver, though – crowds have gone mad for war for as long as there were humans, after all. So maybe it’s not a cause, but rather a way in which some underlying thing manifests in our time? Just thinking aloud here…
Anyway, despite me framing it like this, this isn’t actually the story of my family. Or rather, it sure is, in the very last details – but if you scroll through the earlier comments, you will note that it’s a universal story, across families, across nations, and even across alliances and war factions – even down to the potatoes…
Thanks a lot for commenting and for your support,
Regine
Jason Heppenstall says
Thank you for this essay, Regine. It’s a timely reminder if ever one was needed about how war impacts everyone. Over the last couple of weeks, here in southern England, a number of high-altitude planes have rumbled across the skies heading in an easterly direction. Despite them being so high you can barely see them, their roar is loud enough to rattle windows and make birds fly up from trees. As they’re not on any civil aviation websites, one has to assume they are US bombers heading towards the Gulf.
Each time I hear one, I get a sinking feeling. Here is a plane loaded with explosive bombs, no doubt being piloted by young men who know nothing of the world, ready to drop their deadly loads onto the heads of people they know nothing about. People they would in all likelihood be friendly with if they met them in other circumstances. It is all very depressing.
My own family mostly avoided the action in the two World Wars, save for a (would-have-been) great uncle who was gunned down on the killing fields of northern France, aged 17. My maternal grandfather was an engineer, servicing planes returning from bombing raids, while my paternal grandfather was a fireman. Neither saw ‘action’ other than what happened on the streets of Britain during the blitz.
My (Danish) wife’s grandfather was a policeman in Copenhagen when they were invaded. He spent several years living rough in local forests as part of the resistance movement – something he never wanted to speak about. It was rumoured that after the war, many Germans were captured and were summarily shot by the police, so we have to assume he might have been put up to that and quietly lived with the consequences inside his own head for his remaining years.
Anyway, war is a nasty business. I think there would be a lot less of it if our leaders, journalists and politicians were forced to go fight on the frontlines and lead by example …
Jason
Regine says
Hi Jason,
Thank you very much for your comment and for sharing your family’s story.
For my granny (the maternal one), later in life I think the rumble of thunder was the worst, worse than lightning. Some memories stay with us, even if it’s “just” the distant memory of a sound…
The story of your wife’s grandfather raises an important point, I think: It’s not only the things others do to us which can turn into nightmares, but also the things we do to others.
As you say, a nasty business, and I fully agree: Leading by example would make the world a much better place, and not just in this regard. I’m sure there is a lesson in there for all of us, though… 😉
Regine
Scotlyn says
Thank you, Regine. These are sobering stories, and human stories, and worth the telling. They bring the micro into the macro, and it is at the micro level that we each experience the macro-currents sweeping over our nations.
I have been thinking also of the possibilities of acting, at the micro-level, at this moment when war is in the air, but (thankfully), not yet at my door.
Focussing on the threads that weave and strengthen connections between people, praying that the centre HOLDS, and doing reconciliation work with the warring parties within me…
Thank you for sharing.
Regine says
Hi Scotlyn,
Thank you. Yes, they are sobering stories indeed, but nothing out of the ordinary in wartimes, just, well, what happens to people. I’m sure other people have stories to tell which are a lot worse – but it’s their ordinariness which makes them so sobering.
The personal level makes the macro-currents easier to parse for us, or at least I hope it does in this case. And in the end, all we ever experience is our own micro level, so…
Thanks for what you do at your micro-level, and for sharing these ideas with us! 🙂
Here’s to hoping war will not arrive at our doors at all. Or rather, I wish it wouldn’t knock at anyone’s door, but if wishes were horses…
Hope you and your loved ones are fine,
Regine
Scotlyn says
Thank you… and you! xx
To be honest, I find that it is incredibly difficult for me to sustain any interest in the *why* of what elites intend by doing this or that. (Which is the central concern of most war commentary).
The people whose stories, and struggles, and intentions rouse and sustain my interest, are those, like your various family members described here, which feel ‘real’ and vital to me. I cannot resonate with the sensibility of someone who goes to war to open a new market, or secure a resource, or establish a monopoly, or steal someone else’s resource, or secure someone else’s submission to their monopolhy. None of those situations resonate – I see them as “games of thrones”, mostly meaningful to actual throne occupiers or to aspirational throne acquirers.
I am a peasant. The soil interests me. People interest me. Plants and animals and our sustaining rivers and ecologies interest me. Games of thrones will always be happening, my days are happy so long as those games happen somewhere far from my crops and my livestock. But if they come to my fields, and fight there, what can I do?
Only go through the same experiences other peasants and other ordinary people at the frontlines have always gone through in previous wars, where their priority is simply to survive if they can, and keep who and what they love alive for one more day. A prospect to which I am not immune.
Regine says
Scotlyn,
Thanks a lot for these thoughts!
I hear you about the Games of Thrones players. But then I keep wondering… Going by my personal experience, there is something to the notion that “Everybody is the hero of their own story.”.
So, yes, granted – the media, commentary etc, are framing all these throne-acquiring games as being about power, money and the like. But in the minds of the people playing these games, i.e. in the stories they tell themselves – aren’t they also likely to see themselves as heroes, as people who pursue important goals (and important not just for them personally, but for their group, family, country, or maybe even for mankind)? Aren’t they likely to see themselves as the heroes who do the right thing, who stand on the right side, despite all challenges, against the odds, or under great personal sacrifices?
In the end, they are humans just like the rest of us, even though they happen to have more power and influence than mere peasants. 😉 Thus I wonder if their reasoning isn’t, essentially, the same as that of the peasants – only the stakes for everybody are higher due to their larger reach?
> I am a peasant.
🙂 And you’re not the only one!
> Only go through the same experiences other peasants and other ordinary people at the frontlines have always gone through in previous wars, where their priority is simply to survive if they can, and keep who and what they love alive for one more day. A prospect to which I am not immune.
A thought as sobering as the stories of my family, alas.
Regine
Scotlyn says
Oh, yes. Of course it is also human to fight to keep or take a throne – very often with the best of motives.
So, I am not trying to dehumanise those who play those games. However, it is a fact that those people are not personally known to me. They are not known to me, they are not consulting me as to whether it is a good idea to do this or that.
In general the only thing that I CAN know about most of the elite throne game players, whose names appear in the media, or in history books, is a carefully curated image – whether for good or for ill. This IMAGE is not a real person. (The PERSON, is of course, a real person, but that person is not knowable by me in person). These two facts are what make it difficult for me to sustain an interest in such far away image people.
Regine says
Ah, gotcha – thanks! 🙂
Come to think of, I suppose the bigger issue, given that their reach and influence is much vaster than yours or mine, might be that they don‘t personally know many peasants…
Scotlyn says
Very true! To their very great loss!
Mike says
Thanks Scotlyn for sharing your perspective, which has a humility that I aspire to. Alas I still find myself mesmerized by the explainers, and my tastes in explainers being off to the weird end of the spectrum (tip of the hat to JMG), I am perpetually in a tension with others around me who prefer the plain vanilla stuff. Plays havoc with that simple human desire for belonging… Here’s to inner reconciliation work!
Regine, thanks for shining a compassionate light on the “Players”, but there goes my righteous indignation. More inner work…
All the best to both of you.
Mike
Regine says
Oh, I‘m not saying I‘m never righteous or always compassionate… 😉
Not sure if that is of help to you, but what sometimes works for me is the thought that at the end of the day, the „players“ need to use a toilet just like everybody else. 😀
Regine
Scotlyn says
Thank you, Mike.
I do not think there is much of humility in my make-up… Ask anyone who knows me… 😉
But I hope to be somewhat realistic, in the Stoic sense, about what lies within my sphere of influence (my house, my garden, my family, my community), and what does not (the bigger society I live in, the policies decided and enacted in corporations and governments, and so on).
Jeff Russell says
Thanks for sharing this. It can be hard to put a human side to wars far away or farther back in time, and it’s a useful reminder.
Regine says
Hi Jeff,
Thanks a lot for your comment. Agreed, and we tend to do the same in wars closer by, at least as far as the other side is concerned, don’t we? Or maybe it’s just an altogether human thing, to be prone to forgetting that there is a human on the other side as well?
Regine