The War

It was, of course, Remembrance Sunday yesterday. (At least it was in England, I don't know when you American dudes remember the war heroes.)

I personally was playing football on a muddy and littered pitch in East London yesterday, but even there the Ref made us stand around the centre circle in silence for half an hour to pay our respects.

Now I'm not one for being particularly 'current' in my blog. There are thousands of others doing that already and I certainly don't think I have anything different to say about it...

...But my grandfather does.

A while back he wrote a fantastic account of the Dieppe Raid. It's about 20 pages long and one of the best reads I've come across. He describes the fear of being shelled on a ship, having the man by your side shot in the head and then the experience of drowning out at sea...

"The question demanding an immediate answer was, should I retreat to the beach and be taken by the Germans, or continue out to sea in the hope, now somewhat tenuous, of being picked up? I decided to press on.

My life jacket, which had so far given me good service, now seemed to be losing its bouyancy. As I continued swimming I appeared to be lower in the water. My legs, instead of being fairly horizontal behind me, now inclined deeper as they tried to thrust me forward. I rested more frequently, and instead of trying to float on my back, I found that it required less effort just to stop swimming and gently tread water. I don't know how long this continued. I was cold, had swallowed too much sea, my vomiting was painful and my eyes felt raw. Gradually I lost the strength to even tread water, and after floating legs down for a while, I became aware that I was drowning. My brain seemed to accept the thought without fuss as if my will to survive was about to 'throw in the towel'.

I was suddenly enveloped in a smoke screen. The acrid stuff caused more vomiting and coughing and more swallowing of salt water. Now, only my nose was above the surface of the sea. Is is said that drowning people are visited by a kaleidoscope of snapshots of their previous experience. This mental phenomenon came to me and the pictures it brought were so clear it was as if they were the reality and my drowning was only a dream. Then, abruptly, the dream dissolved into a new reality.

Around me a gap appeared in the smoke and there not twenty yards away was a small craft with smoke spouting out of the canisters at its side."

Yes, that's how close I was to never existing.