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The Smell of Kerosene in the Twilight As I am writing this column a couple of months ahead of time, owing to our removal to Australia, I don't know how topical it will be by the time you read it. But having my children so close to history in the making, albeit an incident that they don't understand and don't really realize is happening, is something that I feel the need to write about. We live in Tetbury in the Cotswolds, a pretty old wool town about 15 miles away from Fairford, home of RAF Fairford, currently operational basis for the NATO raids into Bosnia. We live to the east so have seen few of the planes, except for the odd one or two presumably on their way home to the States. But the other day we drove over to the next county to visit some friends, and drove past the airbase on the way. I've driven past it a number of times before, without really noticing it, but this time of course we couldn't really ignore it. Not that it isn't rather low key, despite what's happening there. I'd expected to see the world's media, but presumably they were in a pub in Fairford celebrating Easter in a liquid, newshoundy sort of way. In fact there seemed to be zero activity going on there. Our minds were particularly on the subject, I suppose, because the couple we were going to visit were related to it. Mike, whose real name I can neither spell not pronounce, is a Serbian who emigrated to England thirty years ago because he disagreed with the regime and the compulsory military service. He and his wife Judy have been on numerous visits to Yugoslavia in the past, piling all their children into a broken down car and weaving their merry and chaotic way across Europe to visit Grandma and the cousins. The accounts of these holidays sound idyllic, rather like Gerald Durrell without the animals. Mike's mother lives in Belgrade, currently under NATO attack. She's in her eighties, a widow, though with family still around her. She is spending her time running into air raid shelters, queuing nervously for bread while listening out for air raid sirens. The phone lines are generally out of order so Mike can't really keep in touch to see if everyone is all right. It brought the human side of war home to me. I don't think Mike believes for a moment that what the current Serbian administration is doing is right. He's a good man and can't stomach what is being done in the name of Serbian nationalism. But it is difficult for him to see past the fact that his elderly mother is being bombed every night. Despite these sober thoughts, we had a lovely day with our friends and returned home in the early evening, the children asleep in the back of the car after a day full of rough and tumble, and chocolate. We talked a little bit about Bosnia, and a lot about a lot of other things. (Like the inventory of our possessions, a current obsession in the light of our move to Australia!) And we drove back through Fairford, windows down in the car because it was a perfect autumn evening, sunny and mild. And the smell of kerosene swept through the open windows like a poisonous reminder of what had happened. Presumably that day Mike's mother had been running for her air raid shelter during the day. Neither of us believe that NATO shouldn't be doing what it's doing. But we cannot help seeing the human side of it from the prospect of Mike's mother, as well as the Kosovan refugees we see on our television every day. I passionately feel that I never want my children to have to understand the horrors of war. I'm not a pacifist in the sense of believing that we should never fight back against an aggressor. I've been through that stage, admittedly, as a naïve teenager, and realize that it's pointless, to say nothing of being an insult to the memory of those who have fought in what they have considered to be just causes. Last year I read a recent history of Europe, 1000 pages of solid conflict and disaster! It beats me why I'm not living in a cave in a bearskin. It sounds like a higher level of civilization than most of Europe's achievements! Of course I'm joking - it's just that when you add together all of the bloodshed and violence throughout Europe's history you have to wonder. I realized, again rather naively I suppose, that I am extraordinarily lucky to be living in one of the few generations of all time who has grown up relatively untouched by war. My parents were both born in 1936 and the Second World War inevitably touched their lives. Graham's parents were born in 1918 and 1927, and their lives must have been touched by thelegacy of the First World War, and certainly by the Second - Graham's father saw a lot of active service, while his mother's brother was thought to be Missing in Action until he walked, barefoot, out of a jungle in Borneo some time later. And yet the best (the worst?) I can do is to claim a vague memory of anti-Vietnam demonstrations when I was a child.I passionately feel that I never want my children to have to understand the horrors of war. I'm not a pacifist in the sense of believing that we should never fight back against an aggressor. I've been through that stage, admittedly, as a naïve teenager, and realize that it's pointless, to say nothing of being an insult to the memory of those who have fought in what they have considered to be just causes. I hope and pray with all my heart that Tamsin and Angus only remember a fleeting glimpse of a strange black plane when they were little and living in England. I hope that is their only memory of war.
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