Although it's a tribute to generations past, it's also meant as a call to action for present and future generations, that "we too can do great things, GREAT THINGS, that will influence, for good, generations to come."
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"They're just trying to break our morale down," her mother would tell them when the air-raid sirens would go off, and the German Luftwaffe airplanes would start coming through. This was usually at night between 10 and 11 pm. Her parents, sister, and herself would jump into what they called siren suits (knit jumpsuits with a hood) and head to the bomb shelter that was built behind their tenement building. There they would wait until the "OK" signal was sounded.
This is what life was like for my grandmother during WWII in Aberdeen, Scotland.
After so many times of heading down to the shelter, especially on those harsh winter nights, Grandma's mother, declared (and I wish I could imitate her Scottish brogue!): "We'll sooner die of pneumonia than from a bomb." For the rest of the war, they would instead crouch under their kitchen table - with pillows to rest their heads - when the sirens would sound, rather than in that cold and damp bunker.
Grandma was 5 years old when the war started in 1939. Throughout the 6 years of the war, until 1945, Aberdeen had 32 air raids (which doesn't sound like too many over 6 years) but they had 364 air raid warnings. In total, 365 bombs fell in their city. (Source)
The worst of it was the night of April 21, 1943, when between 40-50 bombers flew over Aberdeen. Those planes, coming from Norway, dropped 127 bombs, killed 125 people, and injured hundreds of others. (Source)
Was Grandma ever scared? She doesn't remember being so. Perhaps it was the naivete of youth, but most likely she was drawing upon the solidarity of her stalwart parents. They had such a strong faith in God, believing that they would be protected and all would be OK.
And protected they were. One story Grandma shares is of her father who was working late one night at the harbor fixing the trawler fishing boats. It was about 9pm, and his friends at work had gotten off the boat and invited him to join them at the pub. He said, 'Nope, I'm going home.' Tragically, that night, a bomb dropped on the pub and several of his friends were killed.
Grandma recalls a few other war experiences quite vividly:
- One day walking home from school, a German plane was flying incredibly low...and during the day. Usually they only flew over at night. But it was eerie how low he was, and Grandma could clearly see the iron cross emblem on the airplane's tail.
- A member of their church congregation had shards of glass embedded in her arms when a bomb dropped in her neighborhood. The blast of the bomb blew out the windows and sprayed the glass everywhere. She suffered from that injury for quite some time.
- Her parents sent her to stay on a farm in the countryside for a couple months one summer, to keep her safe outside of the city. One night, she and her host family watched what seemed like fireworks in the sky, but it was really probably the British artillery on the ground firing toward German bombers overhead. She wasn't worried for her own welfare; she was far enough out in the country that the planes didn't bother go there. But she was worried about her parents and older sister back home.
These ancestors of ours continued to tap into those reserves of strength and toughness as they needed additional courage to face future challenges.
You see, before war broke out, they were making plans to emigrate to America. They would leave their homeland, their family and friends and occupations, the comfort of a communal culture, to buy one-way tickets on an ocean liner.
It wasn’t fame or fortune that called to them...but religion.
Before the war, they had converted to the Mormon faith, which was a relatively unknown Christian religion in Scotland at the time. What was most important to them now was this faith, and they wanted to be close to others who believed similarly.
Although I have grown up as and am an actively practicing Mormon, I am in awe, and humbled, by the sacrifices our ancestors made, to more fully live what they believe.
Selling virtually all that they owned and traveling essentially with the clothes on their back, they waved goodbye to family as they boarded the train that took them to the ship harbor. Grandma was now 15 years old. The journey was so expensive and they had saved for so many years, they didn’t know if they’d ever return to their homeland. These were one-way tickets.
America didn’t necessarily offer them greener pastures, either literally (they settled in Arizona, after all) or figuratively: It’s no small task to start a new life from scratch. And they were sometimes ridiculed for their accent, and treated as second class citizens.
Why did they do all this? I think about this often. The conclusion that I’ve come to is that I believe they had a vision of the future, of how their sacrifices would benefit generations to come. We are now standing on their shoulders.
We have that same blood coursing through our veins. And we can tap into that same strength and determination. We too can trust in God, and that he has a plan for our lives and he will direct us as we seek to know that plan. We can have courage in the face of hardships, as we ourselves face oceans and continents that separate us from our final destinations, and as we may sometimes find ourselves as strangers in a strange land.
We too can do great things, GREAT THINGS, that will influence, for good, generations to come.
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