Landers

Many moons ago there was a chance, well before my fathers birth, that I could have been Jewish. I don’t mean that as in “hey we’re all connected” but rather that I have a Jewish side to my family and if it wasn’t for relatives marrying outside the faith – my grandfather – I possibly could have been raised under that religion. As it was I dragged to church my Grandmother who tried to raise us the Methodist way but unlike methodists before me I never actually had my Great Awakening.

When I joined the Scout Movement as a young cub I was ordered by Akela to attend our local church on a Sunday morning. It was difficult to disobey her as she was my Auntie Carol. As hard as the Roman Catholics tried to teach me about the Stations of the Cross I just wasn’t interested, although I think that had more to do with every child in the village knowing about the vicar and his wandering hands than the God fearing stories of Lot and his tasty wife! I was an altar boy for all of two months before I just decided religion and being buggered by The Reverend Peterson weren’t for me – how things change!

At school our Religious Education lessons were based on the teachings of the Church of England and Mrs Burney, our teacher, would make us pray, sing hymns and explain to her why we thought it was funny to put badly photocopied porn into the hymn sheets. This, as far as she was concerned, meant we had a one way ticket to hell. Years later, when I’d proved I could pay attention if they’d just given a few minutes before the lessons to put ‘Hide & Heal’ on my love-bites I became her star pupil and had redeemed myself and earned my seat at God’s table. She actually said that to me. I smiled and walked out the room desperately trying not to laugh.

Intertwined with all these religious experiences, lessons and beatings were the Jewish ceremonies we attended as a family to celebrate Bar Mitzvah’s and Bat Mitzvah’s of our various cousins as well as all the different eusin and nissuin celebrations and often wishing the badeken would never end!

I was circumcised at the age of 21 – for reasons I’m not going into now – a painful experience made even more so by Uncle Carl explaining the Hatafat dam brit to me. I just had three inches of skin lopped off the end of my cock (with plenty to spare ladies gents! – wink wink) the last thing I wanted to hear about was how if I just let the mohel take a drop of blood from my bell-end I could be a proper Jew! I’d already chose a religion by this point anyway, if you can call it that, and Judaism was not it although I do own my own kippah should I ever change my mind.

Over the years I learned enough about religion to be able to make up my own mind about it and let every one else make up theirs. If someone gets some form of happiness or peace from believing in a God I don’t believe in then so be it, fair play to them. Each to their own. My nan, on her deathbed, got comfort from that fact she would be closer to God and I think this helped her pass away so peacefully. Who am I to argue with that kind of happy ending?

There’s one things I’ll say about my jewish relatives though – they know how to throw a good party!

L’chaim to that!

I have been watching the series Band of Brothers recently. A friend lent me the box-set after telling me how good he’d found it. I’m half way through and I’m throughly enjoying it but it’s had an interesting but welcoming effect.

My grandfather was an engineer in the Royal Air Force, stationed in Burma during the second world war. My mother has all his medals and somewhere, I don’t know where (yet), she has all the letters he sent his wife, my nan, during his time away. Sadly he died before I was born so I never got the chance to ask him about his war effort but I don’t think I’d have got much information anyway as mom always said that he wouldn’t talk about even when she asked. She’s read the letters he sent home and from what she’s told me Band of Brothers (although about the U.S. army and not the RAF) has it about right with regard to the friendships that grew and the hardships people went through.

Apparently in one of the letters my grandfather sent home he talks about a busy day maintaining aircraft. He recognised one of the aircraft as that flown by a pilot he’d become very friendly with. The engineers watched as the planes took off and hours later watched as they returned. Of course not all of them did, one of those was that of my grandfathers friend. In the letter he talks about how he can’t afford to mourn his loss or take time to grieve as to do so would cause more problems. They prayed at a Sunday service and they remembered their lost friends but still couldn’t mourn. He wasn’t alone in this apparently. No one mourned for fear of breakdowns and becoming unstable and unable to carry out duties. In the letter he talked about how his squadron will mourn as a group when they return.

During the last ten months my family and I have suffered so much loss (thankfully none for at least eight/nine weeks now!) but I cannot imagine being surrounded by it on a daily basis, even more so when I can’t mourn or grieve.

I once tried to join the RAF. I wanted to be a pilot. Not a fighter pilot, those kind of planes never interested me. I wanted to fly troop/tank carriers, the big buggers basically! I did an aptitude test, a medical and had an interview and at the end I got told my eyesight wasn’t good enough to be a pilot but looking at my results someone had decided I was perfectly suited to be an engineer! You can imagine how excited my mother was and how disappointed I was. I didn’t join up in the end, as I’m sure you’ve already worked out.

Having watched Band of Brothers, a series based on real events and real people (some of whom are interview at the beginning or each episode) I have a new found respect for the armed forces, then and now!

A friend I went to school with joined the Navy at sixteen and went out to the Gulf. He was on board the Ark Royal during the first Gulf War. He’ll never know the respect I have for him. Mainly because we don’t talk about more for reason I’m not going into but even though there is that wall between us my respect for him is higher now than it ever was. Another friend is currently (as far as I know) in Afghanistan. A place where 223 soldiers have died since 2001. He’s lost friends, people he cares for. He could be next. That thought scares me a lot!

I always buy a poppy and occasionally my nan (dad’s mom not mom’s mom) and I would attend the Remembrance Day service at the Garden of Remembrance where all our families ashes are scattered but I think this year, having watched Band of Brothers and talked more to my mom about my grandfather, I think it’ll mean more than it has in previous years. I know that’s wrong, I know I should have always had this respect and I think I have in someway, just not the right way and absolutely not enough.

These people fight for our freedom. They fight so I can enjoy my life. I may not agree with why we went to war in the Gulf, I may agree with Thatcher sinking the General Belgrano but no matter what I think these people, these members of the armed forces go into this career of their own free will. They make the choice to enlist and face the possibility of dying for their country.

To them, those from the past and those willing to serve in the future I say thank you. Thanks is all I can offer but if you’re passing I’ll pop the kettle on and I’m sure I could spare a biscuit or two.

And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered;
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition:
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon
Saint Crispin’s day.

William Shakespeare’s Henry V; Act IV, Scene 3