25. On Fear

Dearly Beloved,

The first of those fighting in Ukraine have admitted their guilt and acknowledged that they had committed a war crime. Yet the perpetrator was not some strutting Chechen warlord wearing Gucci boots or a hardened member of the Spetznaz special forces, nor a dull-witted ideologue and member of a modern successor to the Soviet NKVD Destruction Battalions which laid waste to Ukraine in WWII. It was a rather pathetic, 21 year old youth. He probably became a war criminal because he was afraid. It seems his tank had come under attack and he fled in a car with his fellow soldiers. Their innocent victim was on a mobile phone and the youth and his companions were afraid that the civilian would use the phone to give their location away to the Ukrainian army. A more senior passenger in the car seems to have given the youth the illegal order to shoot the civilian and the youth failed to disobey that order. Was he afraid to disobey?

My father did not say much about his experience in WWII which mostly took place on a small corvette HMS Petunia, a ship designed to defend merchant convoys from attacks by submarines. His favourite war story was about a sudden alarm caused by the sighting of three torpedoes coming towards their vessel. There was pandemonium with several sailors jumping overboard. To their surprise one torpedo passed forward of Petunia's bow, the second aft of the stern and the third went underneath and came up the other side without exploding. Later an Italian propaganda broadcast was heard announcing the sinking of a battleship! It seems that their small corvette had been mistaken for a larger vessel and so the torpedoes missed them because they had been set to hit a much larger vessel.

As a senior NCO, he admitted that he had to deal with fear amongst the people he commanded in the engine room. Once a rating left his post (a capital offence in wartime) because he was fearful of being below the water line and my father had to talk him back down again from the deck where he had sought refuge. Another time he found a rating “dead drunk on the plates”. Again this seems to have been a man's attempt to cope with fear. Is it easier to deal with your own fear if you are obliged to manage fear in others for whom you are responsible?

But who am I to talk of these things? I have lived through seventy five years of peace in England without having to go to war and I am reliant on the tales of others. How would I have behaved if I had been in that youth's situation? Does fear in everyday life, far from any battlefield, cause me to lack courage and make wrong decisions?

The Psalmist who wrote Ps. 46:8-11must have had experience on the battle field. This psalm is the challenge to achieve stillness during chaos.

“Come, behold the works of the Lord, What desolations he hath made in the earth.

He maketh wars to cease unto the end of the earth; he breaketh the bow, and cutteth the spear in sunder; he burneth the chariot in the fire. Be still and know that I am God: I will be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in the earth. The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge.”

Peace, 

Paul.

Completed 19 May 2022

Photo: Paul Munton.
The Devil Tempting Christ in the Desert to Turn Stones into Bread
King's College Cambridge.





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