To Everyone ~ The Old 2020 View ~ The New 2025 View
DIARY
To Everyone
The Old 2020 View
The New 2025 View
July 2025
(formerly published under the title To All People)
IN THE LAST CENTURY two cataclysmic events occurred.
The Great War 106 years ago in 1914 (now the First World War), and then - 81 years ago - in 1939, the Second World War. The total military and civilian death rate in WWI was around 40 million - both military and civilian - and a further 23 million military wounded.
Many people, faced with the reality of, for example, the Commonwealth War Graves Cemeteries of both World Wars, or the Menin Gate from the Great War - to their surprise - have the ground seemingly removed from beneath them. Reality hits hard.
The same happens when they come face to face with the horror of the Second World War 25 years later, when the sons of the fathers also went into battle and did not return.
That was the case in millions of families, both paternal and maternal, mine included. Here, I refer to families either side of the divide.
The death rate this time was the deadliest of all military conflicts in world history, around 70-80 million. Some historians suggest that this is more likely to be 100 million. Possibly. As we are learning from Covid 19, statistics can give us many different answers, often understated. And as we see with Covid, there is constant fluctuation at play in interpreting statistics.
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I grew up very aware that my parents both lost their brothers over Germany while serving in the Royal Air Force. It was their loss that united them and led to their marriage in 1949. As well as losing his eldest son in 1945, my maternal grandfather had lost his two brothers with whom he was serving on the Western Front in the First World War.
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On November 15, 2020, the then heir to the throne, HRH Charles, Prince of Wales addressed, at the invitation of the German President, the German Parliament - Deutsche Bundestag.
A few days later a young woman let rip on social media, buoyed up by having a large twitter following. She was beside herself. How dare he presume to speak to the German parliament, she rabbited on, and then displayed her weakness by ending her quite educated rant with “I mean WTF …” at which point I ‘switched off’.
I pondered, distressed too.
What would this woman say to the German People who had invited seven families to a woodland in Lachen-Speyerdorf on August 4, 2018? How would she have replied to Frau Kraus, a lady (in 2025 in her ninetieth year)? I suspect the young kid would have wanted the ground to swallow her up.
To all you young people, get a handle on life. Widen your perspectives, increase your learning, and stop being persuaded by conspiracy theory, hogwash and, bluntly, your selfishness. For those last three rest firmly upon the single platform: absence of knowledge. You have a long, long way to go before you measure up to the Greatest Generation. Bluntly, you won’t.
Some of you do, but are very much the minority.
Covid 19
WWI 1918 - a societal sea change
WWII 1945 - a societal sea change
WWIII - a global, societal sea change
This time not world war but world-wide, and most of us united in fighting a common threat with no armed conflict involved. That is surely the upside, and it is upon this that we should focus our minds as we deal with, and defeat, Covid 19. History will report on how well we did this both nationally, internationally, and globally, in due course. We will succeed in overcoming this pandemic.
But pandemics always bring societal change. That generation known latterly as the Greatest Generation has now gone. A few dozen well beyond their centenary year survive and which is incredible and a salute to each and every one of them.
In 2025 society is very different. There is a selfishness that is at times ugly. What was my part in that success? Today, it is all about me, me, me. I wonder how people in 1939 and 1940 behaved about the huge disruption to their Christmas festivities? I’ve been bombed out - again! But the government is not doing enough. It’s useless. I WANT MY CHRISTMAS!
Take the plunge. As you investigate, even within the stories embedded within your families, you will discover rather more sobering events and concerns at that time.
So, to that misguided young WTF twittering woman - twittering at the thought that she was at last on national TV ‘wait til I put this on my feed’ - note well these six nouns, for they were spoken and proclaimed in the Woodland in Lachen Speyerdorf:
Mitgefühl - Barmherzigkeit - Versöhnung
Mercy - Compassion - Reconciliation
In 2018 the family accompanied me to Lachen-Speyerdorf in Germany, to a WWII crash site as guests of the German People. Addressing those gathered I found myself standing on the actual point in the ground where the aircraft’s cockpit came to rest. Close by, at the base of a tree trunk was evidence of the impact. Nature had set to work and healed the gash, healing the scars and overgrowing. Behind the memorial, I could see a clear path through the woodland, the signature the final approach of the mighty four-engined Halifax, the trees holding their own against the scythe that met them.
It is a very sobering experience to stand upon the very soil covering where one’s ancestor - after whom one is named - spent his last moment as life seeped into that soil. That, along with the millions of other instances on all sides of that terrifying and unnecessary conflict is why the future King (now King Charles III R) was invited to address the Deutsche Bundestag. It is why we were invited to Lachen-Speyerdorf.
Where the cockpit remains at rest beneath the soil, so now the pilot’s namesake and nephew stands at the invitation of the German People - Samstag, August 4. 2018 Lachen-Speyerdorf, Deutschland.
Our families, our ancestors on both sides of that conflict, paid a huge price for the freedom that we - the present families - enjoy and which, for a time, it was even very possible that we might lose.
Let us not squander this freedom.
Build upon this. Stand firm. Stand resolute.
Do not be stupid. Do not be frivolous. Do not ride rough-shod over elderly people.
They were the people who ensured that we would live now and enjoy the freedom we take for granted here. And this surely comes home whilst we deal with Covid 19 and international lockdown and self-isolation.
Human nature plays its hand here. Many people are carers. Many of them really do care. They go the extra mile. There is a sizeable number though who do not care, and delight in abuse. It is for other carers to expose them and to have them removed. And in this regard I brook no quarter.
Be that beacon of light in an angry, troublesome world.
Face down hatred and all the phobias and selfishness.
Refuse to give in.
Freedom will prevail. It comes, though, at a colossal price and an essential shifts, as violent as tectonic plates, has occurred that separates today’s generation from that long past greatest generation…
“What can I do by way of duty to serve, in some way, my country?
What can this country do for me, me, me, to give me a better life and without any cost to me?”
Less than a decade ago I wrote, learn deep down why it is that this Island People is held to be the mother of parliaments. That expression is two and more centuries in the making. It has been paid for in sacrifice. Many times have people, both genders, sought to snuff the life out of it in order to make their ideology and theirs alone be the order of the day.
Young People in the UK are very aware of the horror of indiscriminate bombing when they think back to the Manchester Terror attack and the London Bridge Attack.
But consider this sober fact of history in order to obtain the wider perspective. Always, always, look for the wider perspective.
In Britain, most people listened live to the broadcast by the prime minister Neville Chamberlain on Sunday, September 3, 1939, when Britain declared war on Germany. Of everyone living in Britain on that day, 43,000 civilians would not see New Year's Day 1941.
Why?
Because they were killed in the Blitz.
Keep this perspective in mind when speaking with the old folk. For they grew up, and many lived through it, and many still live, and still recall those dark and evil times as if but yesterday. It is befitting that they are now referred to as "the Greatest Generation".
But Covid has given us an even starker measure. When the prime minister made his address to the British People, the United Kingdom, on March 12, 2020 - not just England as one devolved first minister would prefer us to think - he made it clear that many more families are going to lose loved ones before their time…
Just now I mentioned the 43,000 deaths by bombing. Now consider that as of December 4, 2020, the Covid UK death rate stands at 60,617. Now put that as a backdrop against your concerns about Christmas.
Always seek to widen perspective. This in turn helps us to grasp the horror of what the people of Syria have been going through these last eight years. And Yemen. And Sudan. And now Ethiopia.
To young parents, guide your children in the way that you best know how, in your language, with your own way of emphasis.
The New 2025 View
It is now July 2025. The War in Ukraine enters shortly its fourth year. The Middle East is in flames. I will say what my own generation are asking repeatedly. Why does the media, that scourge of polices and government, still not have the courage to ask the government of Israel, Why are we watching in Gaza what the world watched Nazi Germany do in the Warsaw Ghetto?
“Why are we watching in Gaza what the world watched Nazi Germany do in the Warsaw Ghetto?”
On that last point, my generation recalls a more balanced era as between media and government. That has now gone. Do I believe that any journalist or presenter has any respect for those who hold the highest offices of state in any country?
In 2025, the declared income of one of our top BBC presenters for 1023-2024 is £329,000. I then looked at the declared income for the same period of the present prime minister of the United Kingdom ~ £172,153 including allowances. It says, too, why presenters speak to the highest offices with complete disregard and contempt. It says much for presenters who hide behind that nightly quote look, I’m just a journalist… thereby giving the settee brigade the impression, oh yeah! Look!! They’re no different to us.
That says it all.
Kenneth Thomas Webb
Gloucestershire and Liverpool
27 July 2025
All Rights Reserved
First written December 1, 2020
[i] The superb banner image is by the Artist-Photographer Gregory Hayes through Unsplash
Ken Webb is a writer and proofreader. His website, kennwebb.com, showcases his work as a writer, blogger and podcaster, resting on his successive careers as a police officer, progressing to a junior lawyer in succession and trusts as a Fellow of the Institute of Legal Executives, a retired officer with the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve, and latterly, for three years, the owner and editor of two lifestyle magazines in Liverpool.
He also just handed over a successful two year chairmanship in Gloucestershire with Cheltenham Regency Probus.
Pandemic aside, he spends his time equally between his city, Liverpool, and the county of his birth, Gloucestershire.
In this fast-paced present age, proof-reading is essential. And this skill also occasionally leads to copy-editing writers’ manuscripts for submission to publishers and also student and post graduate dissertations.
