the friendly writers' workshop

Choice or Destiny

and the need to remember

Recently I discussed with friends whether we believed our life was predestined or that we had choice.  Since it was 100 years since the end of WW1 we were inevitably also talking about remembering lest we should forget. The question arose of how long we would remember the dead? Who remembered now the fallen in the Napoleonic wars?  The philosopher Jean Paul Sartre said the only death is to be forgotten. How do we keep alive the memory of those who have lived before us?

Listening to Remembrance Sunday Services made me think about the choices young men had in WW1. In the first year of this war people joined up enthusiastically, believing the war would be easily won and that they would be home again for Christmas. But it soon became clear that the government could not rely on volunteers alone. As the war dragged on the government was forced to bring in conscription. Men had no longer the choice whether to join up or not. By now the horrors of the war could not  be ignored.  More and more wounded soldiers came home to recover and then go immediately back to the front again. I heard one former soldier say that we should honour and remember those who came back and had to live with the trauma of the war for the rest of their lives. He said that they were the real heroes.

We must never forget the pain wars cause. There are never any victors; there are orphans, bereft mothers and fathers, heart-broken widows and lovers.  And there are the survivors who struggle all their life to forget but cannot. Many of them do not want to remember the years of killing and dying.

The most moving tribute I watched during these weeks was a TV documentary about one such soldier. The programme maker Jackie Kay the then Scottish poet laureate was given the remarkable diaries written by a young soldier born and bred in Glasgow. Arthur Roberts wrote them during the course of one year, 1917. In his journals he describes the trenches, the fear, the cold, the heavy shelling and the dying he witnessed. He also speaks of friendship and unexpected acts of kindness. His entries are in prose and poems and include his own drawings and watercolours.  The diaries were found in the early 2004, in the house where Arthur Roberts lived before he died in 1982. When the Scottish Poet Laureate read them she was so moved that she made a documentary.

Why are the diaries so important, such a witness?  Arthur Roberts was a black serviceman who fought alongside his white comrades. The diaries give a real insight into his person, his kindness, empathy, his spirit and pride. However, as a black soldier he was forgotten after the war. Black service men were not honoured or remembered. As Jackie Kay writes ‘There were no black troops included in the Peace March of July 1919, the victory parade held in London to mark the end of the war.’ Black service men were just forgotten by the nation ‘in a collective amnesia’ as Jackie Kay calls it.

Arthur Roberts felt the pain of being forgotten to the end of his days. In the care home where he spent his last years he would sit alone on Remembrance Sunday, he could not bear to watch the ceremonies.

This documentary brought him to life, Arthur Roberts was finally remembered.

We must never forget those who fought and died in wars, in all wars. But we must also not forget the horrors of war, the pain it inflicts, the anger, the shame and the trauma war leaves in the survivors.

To come back to choice or destiny - did Arthur and all the other young servicemen chose to go to war? Or was it their destiny to go and fight, to die or survive? Most likely it was all of these. However much we may think we have control over our lives the reality is that we have far less choice than we like to believe.

November 2018