When will we ever learn
With the sandy soil of Breckland beneath my feet I walked the Desert Rats trail in ThetfordForest.
The 7th Armoured Division, who had earned their nickname in the sands of
North Africa, had been stationed here in the months leading
up to D. Day in 1944.
There is a Cromwell Tank beside the A1065 between
Mundford and Swaffham which is a war memorial to their dead and marks the
beginning of
the walk.
A way-marked path
with interpretation boards leads visitors around the site of the former camp
and tells the history of the famous
fighting force. I made the easy 2 mile walk in reflective mood. It was, you could say, an act of remembrance. I am a war baby and my father had served
alongside the Desert Rats in North Africa. By way of coincidence my son is
serving with the 7th Armoured Brigade today, providing boots on the (sandy) ground in Afghanistan.
The sounds of
military aircraft overhead and the crump of demolition charges from the
Training Area were sufficient reminders that wars and rumours of war have not
gone away. As I walked my heart was full
with prayers for my loved ones but mostly for those who suffer through war. “When will they ever learn? ” asked Joan Baez
in the words of a song that repeated inside my head and I pondered “Is war ever
the right option ?” I find my answer in
the memory of another walk.
The Desert Rats ended the war in a former German Army base
on Luneburg Heath. That is where the 7th Armoured Brigade is still
based. When I visited in the summer, I found the barracks are equidistant from the
railhead and the camps at Bergen-Belsen. A walk around Belsen site with
its mass graves and memorials is a sobering experience. Strangely it is the
same sort of forested sandy heath land
as the Norfolk’s Brecks
To help one’s remembrance the site has a documentation
centre in which the lives tens thousand, out of the hundred thousands who perished , are recorded and displayed along with filmed interviews of survivors and
photo documentation from every period of the camps history. I think it was the beautifully
kept toilets in the documentation centre that gave most pause for thought. When
one contrasted their spotless cleanliness with the degradation that so many had
to endure in the past the mind boggled.
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