A glimpse of Victorian accounts...

I have been away from my blog for a long time for many reasons. The annoyance of accounting and having to learn something that nagged my logical mind from its slumber was first and foremost. Accounting was something new and fearful to be conquered and I didn't want to disappoint myself by dropping out. Can't say that I hated the course, and I don't think that I will ever want to make a career out of accounting, but feel it had certain mysterious benefits to my creativity. Having said that, I would have to say that there was something a little familiar and eerie with the whole accounting procedure. I wondered where the deja vu might have manifested itself and flashed back to another time. I can distinctly remember the particular neatness of indenting the second entry which shall be called the credit value by using my finger to create a suitable space. I can see the paper, lined and yellowed before me. The ink of the entries is more like a sepia tone than blue. It seems to have been watered down and pale on the paper. There is an ink well and my pen dips into it methodically. I run the nib of the pen along the glass rim, and get most of the excess ink off the nib. The sepia ink runs back into the well, and I have a satisfaction of having saved the company some money. We are forced to be frugal, as that is the way it was back then. Not like today. No, I can't say that anyone would give a second thought about wasting a drop of ink today. This saddens me for some reason.

I am very careful not to create blotches on my work as this is the sign of a sloppy and slovenly clerk. It is just not done in this office. I look around the room and see darkness around me, and feel I am alone. I seem to like the solitude and concentrate on my work. The book in front of me is quite wide, and I look at the neat writing, with it's lofty embellishments and fine penmanship. The descenders have a wonderful quality to them. Every letter and number have a marvelous consistency, almost duplicating themselves time and again. I am proud of my work, as it is orderly and beautiful in its own way. I see no mistakes or flaws on the page. My Victorian penmanship is nothing like that of my real time writing which is tense and small. I seemed to have lost something of my character with this incarnation and am constantly apologizing for my bad penmanship. I have lost my consistency and strength and see it draining from me.

My wooden desk is illuminated by the dancing flame of a candle and I delight in its playfulness. In a way, I feel that it is alive and is keeping me company in this dank and dreary place. I have invented ways to make my repetitive routine, less numbing. I see the beauty and poetic nature of the accounting clerk's world. For instance, I notice the colour of the paper beneath my pen as the nib scribes a path across the page. The numbers, large and confident tell a story that cannot lie. They are a record that bears witness to an industry that is thriving. I cannot tell exactly what sort of industry I am busily recording, but that doesn't seem to matter. It is more the feeling that has been evoked and I don't want to go further. It is enough to have had a glimpse of another life that might have been, complete with the dusty books and stained blotter that lie about, as I transport myself to another time where I am hunched over a desk in a dark and dusty accounting office in Victorian England. Why was the feeling so comforting and familiar? Is it my imagination or something more.

Love in the time of war

Remembrance Day has come and gone for another year. I have something to relay about the real-life experiences of certain individuals, who were transformed by WWII, and were gracious enough to tell me their side of the story. One such encounter was with George and Elsie. Few stories are as upbeat as theirs, and I think the years might have worn away the negativity of their war experiences. The two people, whom I visited with in Worcester, England on a holiday, were the parents of a friend of mine, and they were delightful, spunky and full of life. Back when backpacking was in vogue I was on a hosteling tour through Europe and Britain and my first stop was London, and lucky for me I had a chance to meet these two very unique Brits. It was a real bonus to be invited over to spend a weekend at their home and tour around the Cotswold countryside checking out thatched roof homes and old castles. What a treat! They had a gift of the gab and loved to share their many recollections. Their stories were amazing in that they both had participated in war, in different ways. In the 1940's, Elsie was a young woman who was an aerial photographer with the RAF, who shot pictures of areas of interest from a plane. Later, her reconnaissance photographs were analyzed by security specialists who meticulously scrutinized every detail of the terrain.

She loved her job. She also loved George! George was a dashing young sailor with an easy laugh and a great smile, and he, like many others, found himself fighting for king and country. He loved England dearly and he also loved Elsie.

At the beginning of the war, George and Elsie met at a dance, and the rest was history. They kept up their romance, despite (or because) of the danger they were in, and got together when they were off duty. When London was being bombed in the Battle of Britain, the couple looked on from a safe distance and viewed the frightening bombardment of their capital city. I suppose they were frightened and angry at the time, but all that negativity was forgotten by the enduring memories of being in each other's arms, and being madly in love. The uncertainty of the war, and whether or not they would survive it, made them appreciate that very moment in time, and they would cherish their time together. Their world was defined by the ever changing chaos of rubble, rations and sentimental songs like Vera Lynn's "We'll Meet Again".

I learned an important lesson from them. Although they faced hardships and the possibility of death, they chose to keep the memory of the war upbeat and positive. Love was all that mattered to them, and even Hitler couldn't change that. I suspect, like a lot of World War II veterans, that both George and Elsie have passed from this earth, but they are still alive in spirit!

Padre Pio and the bombers of WW2

Padre Pio is the most recently canonized Italian saint, and is well known in the Catholic community. Sainthood is difficult to attain, and in its nature, mystical and beyond the comprehension of the masses. It takes a very open minded person to understand what motivated these mortals, and I wonder how the rest of us really know what God wants from mankind. It would be very difficult to keep up with the high standards of the saints, so I wouldn't recommend trying anything that remotely resembles saintly behaviour in the 21st century.

There are plenty of saints in other branches of Christianity: Protestants, Lutherans, and Mormans have them. I am not sure who else acknowledges them, but I am sure their good deeds have been recorded and stored in some dusty library. It might be a good idea to dust off these books and examine the lives of the saints. Some of their acts might be a little off-putting, and incredulous. The saints were considered superheroes at one time, mainly during the Middle Ages. They could levitate, and go into trances, and their bodies did not decompose after their deaths. All pretty bizarre and unusual traits truly befitting superheroes of another era.

There are many websites that touch upon the lives of the saints, and in particular the ones who are still helpful to us in our current day-to-day existence. Saint Anthony has been known to return lost or stolen items back to the faithful, who pray to him. Those who feel very familiar with him may pray, “Tony, Tony, turn around — something’s lost and must be found.” As impossible as it sounds, this works... or so I have been told by some of my friends, who are not particularly religious, but willing to try their luck by invoking saintly intervention. Their stories made me wonder what exactly was happening, and again question the nature of our realities.

Back to Padre Pio. Padre Pio bore the wounds of Jesus on his hands, feet, and side for 50 years (known as the stigmata). Among his mysterious gifts were bilocation, prophecy, conversion, reading of souls, and miraculous cures. People are still being cured through his intercession in ways that cannot be explained by medicine or science. During the second world war, he played an important role in preventing the bombing of his village. There are many accounts of bomber pilots who could not fulfill their missions, due to a mysterious phantasm that was seen hovering in the skies.

The following is taken from a site: http://members.aol.com/fmrega4/Flymonk.htm

"Many Allied aviation pilots of various nationalities (English, American, Polish, Palestinian) and of varied religions (Catholic, Orthodox, Moslem, Protestant, Jewish) who during the Second World War, after September 8, 1943, were based in Bari to undertake missions on Italian territory, testified to an amazing occurrence. Each time, while fulfilling their Italian military mission, they approached the zone of the Gargano, in the environs of San Giovanni Rotondo, they saw in the sky a Friar, who in stretching out his wounded hands, prevented them from dropping their bombs. Foggia and almost all of the centers of Puglia were subjected to repeated bombardment; on San Giovanni Rotondo not one bomb fell.

This event, which is to say the least unheard of, was directly witnessed by the general of Aeronautica Italiana Bernardo Rosini, who at that time was part of the "United Air Command" operating out of Bari with the Allied air forces. "Each time that the pilots returned from their missions," General Rosini told me, "they spoke of this Friar that appeared in the sky and diverted their airplanes, making them turn back.

"Everyone laughed at these incredulous stories. But since the episodes kept recurring, the Commanding General decided to intervene personally. He took command of a squadron of bombers to destroy a cache of German war materials that was said to be right in San Giovanni Rotondo. Up until that time, no one had ever succeeded in going in that direction because of the presence in the air of that mysterious phantasm which forced the airplanes back. "Since this had been happening for some time, at the base there was much apprehension. We were all curious to see the results of this operation. When the squadron returned, we went over to ask what had occurred. The American general was quite upset. He recounted that as soon as they arrived near the target, he and his pilots had seen rising up into the sky the figure of a monk with his hands held high. The bombs dropped all by themselves, falling in the woods, and the planes turned in retreat, without any intervention on the part of the pilots."

The amassing of information in the dark ages...

Last night I was thinking of the war and how lucky a lot of us have been to avoid the direct experience of war, and since the topic is a little heavy and depressing, I thought I would bring in a little levity. So back to Attila the Hun and his hordes of marauders and my querry about their method of passing on their battle experiences so they could be recorded for future generations. It seems as if we know so much about history, that it could have happened yesterday, and this begs the question of how the heck did the information travel from one place to another and come to be recorded in a time where the majority of people didn't have access to media of any kind. Honestly, I now believe that the whole dynamic of passing on information for posterity's sake was facilitated by a very powerful organization at the time. This particular group employed very educated and scholarly men dedicated to the art of language, and writing. They were known to be the recorders of history and in particular, a specific time frame. Because of their great powers of persuasian, they were able to extract secrets and delve into the general mind sets of their followers. Their organization was fairly militaristic in its structure, and had a strong leader, with a defined hierarchy that branched out in many levels. They had a monopoly for many centuries and were bestowed with powers beyond the earthly realm. Of course I am talking about the CHURCH. The CHURCH had the divine right to be the guardians of souls, and the priests who worked there had omnipotent powers over the masses. In this case, the pen was mightier than the sword.

So might this be the way that information was recorded and passed down through the ages? Their passive method of extracting information was through voluntary confession, in order to seek salvation. It has been said that confession is good for the soul, so this was no problem for the general population to rat on themselves. It might have started out in a disorganized manner, and maybe not facilitated in the secluded confessional booths that are popular today. We will have to speculate that there was some sort of understanding between sinner and priest that all the information was going straight to the Divine Father in Heaven, using the pious priest as a conduit. Some of this vital data might have gotten lost in the teleportation, but I am sure that sinners, being the way they were, had ample opportunities to reenact their sins and confess all over, thusly getting the chance to once again, be heard. With the guarantee, of complete forgiveness, sins had a way of reappearing over and over, to be forgiven time after time.

I have read that in Italy of the 1940's, confession in a lot of churches consisted of a face-to-face confrontation with the parish priest. In one case, the infamous Padre Pio was known to be very harsh with his parishioners, and when asking to recall one's sins, he asked if there was anything else that might have been forgotten. Because he was very astute (some would say psychic), he would actually be so enraged when the confessor didn't give it all up, he would reach out and slap the stunned sinner. I can't imagine the pressure of such rough tactics, but what it proves is sometimes the priest already knows everything that is going on in town. Probably because he learned it from someone else who had confessed earlier. It became a little too "small town" and gossip centric.

James Bond and real agents

Yesterday I wrote about the women spies of the second world war, and the information I had initially gathered for the blog was taken from two books that I read in the summer. The second book was written about Krystyna Skarbek, who was called Churchill's favourite spy, and the author of the book, was Madeleine Masson. Krystyna was born a countess in Poland, and when the war started in 1939, she and her husband were in their new plantation home, in Africa. They both chose to offer their services to the war effort and left for England to find out what opportunities awaited them. She was one of the agents that was selected and trained by the Special Operations Executive and was a very successful agent by all accounts. One of her spy names was Christine Granville, and she also had a French name, which was Pauline (and sometimes Jacqueline) Armand, when she was embedded in France as a spy. Luckily for her, her understanding the French language was immaculate, and she spoke flawlessly. She was very astute and sharp and was able to avoid those kinds of situations that could be fatal to someone in such a dangerous job.

Krystyna was known to take huge risks in her life and all the while, she seemed to have fantastic luck and loved the danger of espionage* (a word from Latin espionnage) or spying is a practice of gathering information about an organization or a society that is considered secret or confidential without the permission of the holder of the information (*Wikipedia). Where many failed in their attempts at spying, and died horrific deaths, Krystyna sailed through her covert operations, and seemed to thrive in a most stressful environment. She was known to have skiied in the dark, over the Tatra mountains to reach her home land in order to spy on the occupiers of her country. It was very dangerous skiing, and no one was there to stop her, as the whole idea of taking these risks in such impossible conditions, was preposterous. She managed to slip in and out of Poland and pass on vital information to Churchill about the amassing of Nazi troops on the Russian border.

I think it has taken a long time for people to find out about these women who risked their lives for their countries. However, recently, there has been an increased interest in this sort of historical documentary. I read somewhere, that there will be a movie made about Krystyna, and the actress, who is being considered for the lead, is Gwyneth Paltrow. There is also a James Bond connection, as the author Ian Fleming based some of his material in his book, "Casino Royale" on the countess/spy. In this book, the character Vesper Lynd is in fact, Ms. Skarbek and her memory is honoured by the author of the spy thriller. He was very smitten by her and worked her into his book. Unfortunately Krystyna, passed away in the early 1950's and couldn't quite fit into a world that was no longer at war. She was restless and unhappy, and yearned for the life that she had grown accustomed to, with its danger and passion.

I would highly recommend that we all find out more about these super heroes of another generation and keep their memories alive, to inspire others.

Women spies of WW2

In the summer I read a few books about women who served their countries by becoming covert operators, during the Second World War. I discovered one of these books by sheer luck, as it was showcased in the "Recently Acquired Books" area and I was happy to be its very first reader. The title of the book was "Spymistress: The Life of Vera Atkins: The Greatest Female Agent in World War II". It was a great book, and made me appreciate the amazing efforts and risks that were taken by women who were deeply committed to the war effort, by means of untraditional channels.

The second world war brought about a certain equalization in the dynamics of demographics. Women were now being employed as willing participants, and what a liberating feeling that must have been. Not to mention that it was dangerous and terrifying. There were female pilots who were trained and deployed both in Russia and the United States. The Russian women actually fought along side their male compatriots and flew over battle torn Europe. In America, the women belonged to the WASPs (Women Airforce Service Pilots) and were trained to fly non-combat missions and deliver new airplanes from the factories to airfields so they could be transported overseas. In addition to female pilots, there were spies who were carefully recruited in various countries. The Brits were great at sourcing the new participants. They would target someone and start a casual conversation and draw them out. If this person was known to be bilingual, i.e. French, and had knowledge of the geography of France, they willingly might end up being parachuted clandestinely, into the quiet country side all by themselves, and if all went well, they would connect with the Resistence. Imagine the terror, and facing the unknown. Quietly parachuting down from the night sky, as their plane flew off back to England. These women and men knew nothing of where they would end up. There are incredible stories of survival and courage.

Once they landed, hopefully with no physical injuries, they would bury their parachutes, and gear, and change into the appropriate, specially-made attire they had stashed away in their backpacks. The details of their clothing were very important, as they had to completely blend into the population and couldn't slip up. In England, they had been outfitted by tailors who knew how to copy French apparel, along with the niggling minutea of what labels to stitch into the clothing. Everything had to be perfect. If one mistake was made, many lives were at stake and the consequences were horrific. Some of these spies returned safely to their families after their assignments were over, but most of them disappeared off the face of the earth, their fates unknown.

The book about Vera Atkins is worth reading, especially for the younger generation who might not appreciate what their grandparents went through, and what sorts of stories of valour and sacrifice are just waiting to be told by a dying generation. Vera was the brilliant assistant to Colonel Buckmaster at the French section of the Special Operations Executive. At the outbreak of WW2 she joined the WAAF and soon went to work as a secretary at F Section, set up in 1940 to run covert operations and help the Resistance in German-occupied France. She was the last person that her inductees saw at take off as their airplanes climbed into the night skies, heading towards France. At the age of 93, Vera died, and the author of the book waited to publish her story. She knew about the book, and collaborated with the author, who understood that the book would be printed after her death.

I didn't know that much about that division of the SOE, that recruited regular women to become cool, calculated killers. A lot of them used their stiletto knives to silence the enemy, as that was the preferred method of killing someone. It was quiet and didn't bring on any unwanted attention. The few women who survived to tell their tales, didn't really go into the details of their battles. A lot of memories would die with them. It is our duty to presereve what we know.

now and then...

So the war of today looks nothing like the wars of yesteryear. I am an avid reader of historical accouts of World War Two in particular. Not sure why this is, but I like to find out a lot about the war, and its participants who are still lucky enough to be alive and able to remember what their part of the war world looked like and what they did to survive. These accounts are very interesting to me and I am surprised at the variety of accounts that I now have tucked into my memory bank. Seeing that Remembrance Day is coming up, I would like to blog about this further in upcoming sessions.

When I meet someone (in their eighties) who I think might have some interesting stories about their recollections of the war, I lead into a converstion gingerly. I don't want to upset anyone, or bring up bad memories and maybe induce an episode of shell shock. I mention this, because one of my highschool teachers actually suffered from shell shock that he might have acquired in the first world war. He was fairly old, and I am not sure whether he could have fought in WW2. It was hard to pin down when he might have been in any modern war that included exploding shells. Either he was very young in the first world war or quite old in the second world war. Even as a child, the war seemed to surround a lot of us baby boomers. It wasn't forgotten, and people were still recovering from it either emotionally or financially, or spiritually. That may be why I am still interested in the war dynamic.

One of the topics to consider about war, is the various strategies of battle, and how humanity came to sort out their aggressions in the first place. When I was researching Attila the Hun, I was illuminated somewhat. I didn't really think about the sorts of things that would concern the statisticians and planners of wars. For example, in the olden days, the war effort didn't include prepackaged foods that could be mixed with water, heated and eaten. Not that this sort of food is that exemplary, however, someone within the last hundred years, for the first time actually thought of the poor soldiers in battle and wondered what they would be eating. In earlier days, apparently the Huns, would eat whatever was around and their favourite fast food was ... the enemy. Ouch. Cannibalism was not only encouraged but it was probably the only way to survive. From one account I read, the Huns would not even bother to start up a roaring fire to heat up their dinners, but ate their enemy raw. That was a little disturbing, and I can't imagine the carnage, and the bloody messes. It must have seemed like a scene from Dante's Inferno.

The battlefields must have been pure hell, but no one really talks about that in history. Everything is cleared up and sanitized, so we won't get the residual negativity of war. Living on earth is tricky at best, and fraught with disappointments, death, pain and hunger, but when war is added to the mix, you can be sure that all the negativity is blown out of proportion.