And now for something completely different

The ‘One Day in History’ campaign has an interesting little project:

'One Day in History' is a one off opportunity for you to join in a mass blog for the national record. We want as many people as possible to record a 'blog' diary which will be stored by the British Library as a historical record of our national life.

Write your diary reflecting on how history itself impacted on your day - whether it just (sic) commuting through an historic environment, discussing family history or watching repeats on TV.

Hopefully, if you join in with this project you will construct your entry without the lack of attention to detail as demonstrated above.

I have been tempted throughout the day to post something subtly facetious and submit it, in order to mislead future generations. A conversation with Liz where she contemplated handing over the throne to Terry Wogan. Or perhaps a discussion on the campaign to build a space docking station on the village green.

Instead, I will be cheating by diverting from my usual nonsense and posting something for posterity that will make bugger all difference - but if we don’t try then we have no defence for our cynicism.

91 years ago this week, my uncle was killed in a totally senseless, I mean even more senseless than the average senseless, military action. He was barely twenty years old. He and countless other ill-prepared and naïve young men were sent over the top in a futile and virtually impossible attempt to dislodge some opposing troops from a heavily fortified position on higher ground. They ran across some mud, and were killed by machine gun fire. This week they opened a new memorial to the men who died at that time.

He is also commemorated on a monument in Loos, France, together with over 20,000 other dead young men.

91 years later we are still sending our young men to be killed in senseless wars. (Nearly all wars are totally senseless, some of them more senseless than others). The only thing we have learned is how to kill people more efficiently, but have sacrificed any notion of discrimination in doing so.

If you are reading this, you will be aware that there is nothing original in the content and sentiments. Indeed, I suspect that what I am writing could be written, albeit more lucidly, by most of the regular readers of this little outpost of insanity. The point is that the families of those killed in the Great War would have had no way of understanding why grief had been inflicted upon them. Today, in the wars around the world, there is the same bewilderment about why men are sent around the world to kill and be killed for no purpose. There are those who profess to justify and promote war, just as there always have been. If you are reading this in the year 2742, then they will probably still be among you. I am with the bewildered. I hope you are too.

Next time on this journal, we will return to the topics of men with turnips up their arses, or some major breakthrough by physicists to do with the nature of existence that is of no moment to anyone, or a detailed explanation by me of some facet of history, religion or literature.

Harry Phillips 1895 - 13Oct1915