War Even When There is Peace

This chapter was inspired by a very dear person in my life who told me that I just don't know, I cannot relate because I have never lived through any war despite my ripe age. There are hundreds of millions in the present who are in the middle of it, who have to fight, who are constantly living in threat of getting killed. 

Then there are the ones who had to flee their homes, their countries and settle down in a strange place despite of language and cultural differences.

Well, here is how I can relate. A few years ago military planes were flying just above us in Ottawa, there was a military exercise. Yes, we were warned, but as I was doing the dishes while singing loudly, (I often do that), I didn't really care what went on outside. All of a sudden roaring, thunderous noise pulled me back to reality. And right then I felt fear, I wanted to run and find a safe place to hide. My heart started to beat faster and I just couldn't help my reaction. Of course the planes left and there I  was left wondering what the heck happened to me. I have never lived through a war, I should not be affected by a simple Airforce exercise.

Then I started to remember. During my childhood, in the sixties and seventies there were organized national-level air defense exercises and mandatory trainings even for the general population. 

My father and all men who were reservists, had to report to the leading officers in their uniforms to start their training. 

It didn't matter that they had to work, they had families, they might have had a wife just about to deliver, a dying parent, their lives halted and for a few days they were soldiers ready to fight imaginary enemies with riffles on their shoulders. 

Not just the men, oh no! All the others had to stay home, they had to roll down the blinds and keep the house in the dark. There were officers going around and checking the houses, listened to louder noises. 

I experienced this annually since I was born all through my childhood. Planes flying above us with roaring deafening noise, there were sounds of bombs or shootings, so that remains with me, my body remembers, my unconscious knows. 

So I guess this is why I never wanted to go to see airshows, even when I was a long time citizen of Canada.

Then one day every school year, at the end of September we had to go and march in the wilder parts of our town. We had to navigate, report at every station, and complete the tasks ordered. We had to handle a grenade, practice how to pull the pin and throw it towards the target. We were given a riffle and we had to get down on our stomachs and shoot a target. We had to hide ourselves from an imaginary enemy.

By the end of the day we walked tens of kilometers, and then, after the last station we still had a long walk home. We were exhausted! Yes, we had the iconic aluminium cup and bowl too!

It is deeply ingrained in my nerves. 

(At this moment I just realized the reason the Orban regime in Hungary could keep people in fear all the time. Their most dedicated fans are all older, just as Orban, they were born in the fifties and sixties. These people remember the air exercises, the roaring sounds and the constant threat in the cold war. )

And then, the stories I heard from my father and uncles.

To start with, my grandfather had to go and fight in the first world war. He had no choice, he couldn't choose who to kill and when. Kill or die. 

I don't know the details though. I was still a relatively small child when he passed away.

His first son was born in 1915, he was a war child. Unfortunately I could never meet him. He was the one who was called in and went to fight in the second world war. He left his parents, sisters, brothers and fiancee behind. Meantime the family lived in a three room house, ate corn in deferent forms. My father had to babysit my first cousin while the baby's mother and the others were working. My father was seven years old when the war started and thirteen when it ended. He never ate corn after that. My uncle came back in 1948, thin, sick and broken. He died later in 1948. His fiancee never married, she worked with my father for decades, until she retired. I knew her well.

I wrote an essay about the veterans who had no choice but fight because they were born in a country taking the wrong side.

My third son inherited my grandfather's and my oldest uncle’name, so he knows their stories too. 

In that sense from my great grandfather, through my grandfather and uncle, through my father and me, my sons are part of the war story too.

With the all the wars recently, I am devastated that more and more people are experiencing the hell wars create and I can't even imagine how long and how many others will still remember, one way or another, a war even when they themselves were born in time of.