The Indian sojourn serial will return, but as a kind of ghost war (unreal to all but those that are in it) rages in the middle east, the Guardian has published some letters written by combatants in D-day 60 years ago. The letters were written by Brits, Americans and Germans and are indeed "a moving testament of those caught in the snare of history". A war that was actually about something other than economic gain and vapid revenge. It was interesting also to read the two Germans getting more bound up in the historic relevance of the event. One says:
Today I wanted to go to see Faust but I could not concentrate enough for that due to these events, and moreover in the end they performed a different play. The greatness of poetry really vanishes in front of the happening of today. It's tingling in my blood.
And another:
Of course, we are also just humans with wishes and requests to providence, that one would like to see fulfilled. Although we have learned to often forego everything during the war that relates to us as persons and to our futures, we catch ourselves again and again still having wishes that may, of course, together with life, be extinguished into an eternal nothingness by the explosion of the next shell, but uphold our faith and our perseverance. We have begun the greatest passage of arms and nobody knows what will be by the time our letters arrive.
Simon Schama's short introduction is also worth the read.
Posted by Joe at May 28, 2004 05:10 PM