History repeats — unless we’re careful

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 29/07/2024 (466 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

I caught up with VeRA on a sunny Manitoba summer evening recently. It was just the two of us — and hundreds more Manitobans of all ages, milling about the static display of the only Avro Lancaster bomber still flying in North America.

Our relationship goes back to the summer of 1988, when I heard (and watched) the first flights out of the Mount Hope airport, where she was restored to flying condition. Living in rural Ancaster, it seemed the practice circuits always took her overhead.

I remember well when VeRA was joined by two other vintage aircraft, a Hawker Hurricane and a Supermarine Spitfire, for her official inaugural flight.

Sadly, five years later, a fire at the airport destroyed the Hurricane, the Spitfire, and several other aircraft, along with the hangar and maintenance records. Only the heroism of the local volunteer fire brigades saved VeRA — I remember a tow truck removing a stalled fuel tanker from near the fire, and the aircrew installing her wheels so VeRA could be towed to safety.

But there is more to the story. VeRA is officially the Andrew Mynarski VC Memorial Lancaster. When I was very young, in Calgary, I first learned about Mynarski’s heroism because his cousin, Walter, was a friend of my parents. After we moved to Winnipeg in 1967, I was the first to spot the Royal Canadian Legion branch on Main Street, named in his honour.

Later, while teaching on the base at 17^th Wing, I also saw his Victoria Cross on display in the NORAD bunker, where one of my grad students had gotten us special access one quiet evening for our seminar.

So, having also visited VeRA at the new Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum in Mount Hope, I had to welcome her to Winnipeg, Mynarski’s hometown.

But it was an evening, and a week, of mixed emotions. I am sure the hosts were thrilled by the turnout — it was remarkable how many people lined up for hours, with their often-small children and grandchildren, to tour through the airplane.

Yet, as my summer course on militarism winds down, I was troubled: How many of the people there knew why that aircraft was built, or why 55,573 people died in Bomber Command, along with many thousands more on the ground? We teach so little military history in schools or universities, that I doubt many of those present really knew much.

From a young age, I was just as enthusiastic about that history as the kids that scampered around VeRA. I would often recite the story of Andrew Mynarski from memory — unsolicited — and my reading involved all kinds of books about the Second World War and flying in general.

Unfortunately, both for lack of opportunity and means, I have never visited those battlefields or cemeteries, across the ocean. Yet I have lived with the thoughts and words of the people who fought and sometimes died, and try to communicate something of their wartime experience to my students today.

Canadian military historian Tim Cook refers to the Second World War as “the necessary war,” the one we needed (as Canadians) to fight against fascist tyranny and its underlying ideas, that otherwise could have easily skipped across the ocean and threatened us here.

That same description, however, does not apply to the Great War of 1914-1918. That war, and how it ended, created the conditions for what the popular press referred to — as early as 1919 — as “the Next War.”

Far from being “the war to end war,” the Great War made the next one not optional, but “necessary.”

So, in the aftermath of Hurricane Beryl, spawned and worsened by a warming ocean, my mixed emotions were heightened this past week by the attempted assassination of former president Donald Trump and by the fatuous hype of the Republican National Convention.

What I heard sounded very much like the fascism against which the Lancaster crews fought.

Uncritical linkages between militarism and nationalism; the over-layering of faux Christian religiousity in the symbols and words used in convention speeches; the blind hatred of “the Other” (whoever that happens to be at the moment) — all these are breeding grounds for fascism disguised as a popular movement.

Politicians who claim to be “for the people” rarely are, because their words (not their actions) are offered as self-validating evidence. We should judge them by what they do, or have done, not by what they say in the moment to wind up the crowd.

VeRA’s visit reminds us of the cost of accepting the glib words of would-be leaders, especially those who offer us simple bumper stickers as shallow policy, in a world that is fraught with complexity and imminent danger.

Otherwise, I fear we have not heeded the lessons of history, and so — with those children who scampered around VeRA’s wheels — will again pay a bitter price.

We must stop preparing for war — against people or planet — before fighting it once again becomes necessary.

Peter Denton is adjunct faculty at the Royal Military College, and writes from his home in rural Manitoba.