VE Day: Why those among 'lucky' generation who wish we'd stop remembering war are plain wrong

As members of a generation that has not been called up to fight a war, we have a responsibility to remember past conflicts and learn lessons for the future

Until I was 10, I believed my father had been shot by a Japanese sniper. It made sense. He’d served in the Far East during the war and had a wound on his hand as a souvenir.

I never doubted the story he used to tell, despite the fact that his service on an aircraft carrier would have made that one remarkable shot. Then one day my mum tired of the old joke and the truth emerged. The mark was actually the result of my dad trying to remove a wart one day with a cigarette.

War stories at that time seemed so believable. Ordinary men had been thrust into extraordinary situations. Butchers, bakers and bankers were handed guns and told to get on with it. They found remarkable reserves of energy, ingenuity and ability because they had no other option.

The Second World War still cast a shadow when I was growing up. My father and all my uncles served and survived but knew many who had not. A Japanese sniper didn’t get my dad but he had watched Kamikaze pilots crash into troopships killing thousands. And he knew men who’d suffered unspeakable horrors in Japanese prison camps.

READ MORE: VE Day: Special salute for old Scottish regiment who lost 1,000 men during war

During the Second World War, Stephen Jardine's father witnessed Japanese Kamikaze pilots crashing into Allied ships, killing thousands of people (Picture: Keystone) | Getty Images

A quiet, sombre presence

Commando comics were a staple growing up with the nasty Nazis always getting a good pasting from the brave Tommies. The World at War was on TV in primetime, bringing the horrors of those six years into all our front rooms.

And a distant relative was always a quiet and sombre presence at every family gathering, never the same since he’d spent 12 hours in the North Atlantic after a U-boat torpedoed his ship.

These days, that all seems so faraway. The 80th anniversary commemorations of VE Day have concentrated on the celebrations and the relief that came with the end of the war. That’s understandable. But the voices remembering those days will soon leave us and living testimony will be no more. Of the millions who fought, only a few thousand are now left.

In our lifetime, the last WW1 veterans have gone and the WW2 veterans are a diminishing number. What happens then? Some believe a shift should then happen and, as a nation, we should stop ‘banging on” about the war.

READ MORE: VE Day: The Nazi attack on Scotland feared by army commanders

An enormous privilege

That would be a dreadful mistake. We need to understand and learn from our history. But more than that, it would also be a betrayal of all those who gave so much. Not just the soldiers who served but the families who lost loved ones, the kids who did without and the communities dented and bruised by loss and destruction.

Both my father and my grandfather were called on to fight for their country. The fact that my generation has lived without that threat and fear is an enormous privilege. We are the lucky ones. It’s also a responsibility. We’re not being sent into battle far from home via land, air or sea with no sense of what the outcome will be.

We’re just being asked to remember. To look at some old film and photographs, to hear some stories and to learn some lessons for the future. Eighty years on from the end of the Second World War in Europe, and with conflict again on the continent, surely that is not too much to ask?