Daily writing prompt

What major historical events do you remember?

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What major historical events do you remember?

Interesting question, but very problematic. How do I define a “historical event”? What exactly do I mean when I say “I remember”? Max Boyce had a lovely song in which the chorus was “I wuz there.” If everybody who says they saw Llanelli defeat New Zealand in 1973 at Stradey Park had been there, there would have been 300,000 people pressed into a ground that held about 15,000. But, as Max Boyce sings, “I wuz there”. Well, in spirit, anyway, and I have seen the film several times. I also remember watching Jim Laker’s 19 wickets in the 1956 cricket Ashes. I watched that match on B&W TV. Does that count as an historical event that I remember?

How about the Battle of Hastings, 1066? In 1966, I ran in a road relay that led from Bristol to Stamford Bridge, where Harold defeated Harald Hadrada, down the main highway to The Trip to Jerusalem, where we stopped for a pint, down to Hastings, where we re-enacted the battle that saw William the Conqueror take the throne. Several of the runners wore Saxon uniforms, a couple even had long, blonde hair. We re-enacted two battles. Does that mean I remember that historical event?

Let us talk about Stonehenge. I first went there when there were no railings, no fences, and when sheep and cows could safely graze. I remember it well. And I remember creatively re-constructing, with my grandfather, the digging of the post-holes, the raising of the stones, the transportation of them, by ship and log rollers, from the Prescelli Mountains in Wales to their current resting place. As Max Boyce says, in my own mind, I was there. I was there too at the destruction of Maiden Castle. The first book I ever bought, age about six, was Sir Mortimer Wheeler’s autobiography, Still Digging. I can still feel that Roman ballista arrow going through the victim’s backbone. Does that count as a memory, as a presence, as a moment of reality?

The Conquest of Granada, the Expulsion of the Jews from Spain, the later expulsion of the Moors, the Adventures of Don Quixote, the mixing of truth and reality, the questioning of authority, the inquiry into the meaning of meaning, my mother’s sister phoning me after 9-11. “What’s all the fuss about, Roger? There were only three planes. We had them every night, over here, during the London Blitz, for two long years.” What impresses itself upon the human consciousness. How do we remember things and why? The Spanish Armada -there were actually three of them -, the Peninsular wars in Spain, the battles of Trafalgar, Vimeiro, Salamanca… Then we can move on to Vimy Ridge, Ypres – Wipers, as my grandfather called it, his days in the trenches, recounted to me, in the kitchen, day after day, in vivid, lived language that still remains with me. And he would sing – “If you want the whole battalion, I know where they are, they’re hanging on the old barbed wire.” Yes, I was there with my grandfather. I remember it well. The Battle of the Atlantic, the Hunt for the Bismarck, the Battle of Britain – I sat in the cockpit of a Spitfire, a long time ago, during the Battle of Britain celebrations, and I climbed into and walked around the interior of a Lancaster.

Memory and the reconstruction of historic events, some we actually lived, and some we just dreamed of, and some we saw at the movies. What is memory – an actual happening or a creative reconstruct? What is the meaning of meaning? And read Bertrand Russell’s book on the subject before you answer that one. As for me, I was there, standing beside Max Boyce, witnessing the game, though, as he says, “a hundred thousand in the ground, and me and Roj outside.”