Gerald's War...

...The rather unseemly selling of 'war stories' - actually neither a war as such nor most certainly any kind story at all - this week has set me in mind of Gerald, who had charge of the Dragon Inn before the later onset of our beloved Gilbert & George combo.

Gerald - as a man of his generation, my own father one other such - had fought for his country in the Second World War. Unlike though Palladas Senior, whose combat was in Europe alone, Gerald had been posted to the Far East thence to become a prisoner of the Japanese for four years before release more dead than alive.

More than that few people knew, it not being Gerald's habit or disposition to comment on past times. With firm gaze his eyes always seemed to point to a future and not a past. Not that the future beckoned necessarily with any great allure, just simply better not to look back.

The one small clue to those before times were on the rather rare occasions that Japanese tourists came to the Dragon seeking pie and a pint. In no single way or manner did Gerald ever intimate any hostility to his foreign guests. Just perhaps by an extra precision of bearing, an acute formality of service, would Gerald make his personal discomfiture known to any who knew him well. If there were agony it was in hiding it from any view.

Such small parties would inevitably contain a man of Gerald's age. Their greeting was utterly ceremonial - stiff, precise, with handshakes of subdued acceptance. They though - these two men of a shared intense past - would never talk much one to the other from the greeting to the leaving.

It was more than a lack of a common language. Gerald did have several words and phrases of Japanese he had absorbed. Mr Suzuki - if such he were - would also have a limited English he might have offered. Neither though would attempt any fluency in the other's language. Whatever it was that either might have wished to say to the other could not be communicated verbally.

I believe Gerald could forgive, but he could never forget. Remembrance Sundays were hard for Gerald.

"That Burma bloody thing," was all he ever said on the matter. Royal Navy personnel take note.