My father rarely talked about what his own father did in the RAF during WW2 - all that I knew that he was a Flt. Lt., that he possibly made Sqd. Ldr by the end of the war, and that he was deskbound for his entire service. But one day we were watching The Dam Busters and anyone who has seen that truly fine picture will remember a beautiful cameo from Arthur Howard as a ground-based pay officer who attempts to gain the special breakfast reserved for 617 Squadron. At that moment my father said - That chap would have been like your grandfather. And whenever I see the film, I think of him, younger than I am now, hoping that his friends and colleagues would make it back. To quote a great historian - The dead go on before us, larger than in life they seemed, as Larkin also said, never more so than in these films. As we heed them, in our history books and in our cinemas, their ener-gies flow again down the reopened channels of feeling and imagination. The ghosts walk, inspiring us with new possibilities. That is what ghost stories are for.
Posted on: Sun, 10 Nov 2013 14:40:38 +0000
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