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My Grandfather chimed in on the situation with Gemma O'Doherty. He's been dead since 1985. He did so on 3rd December 1944 from somewhere on the front in Northern Italy in a letter to my Uncle explaining why in the event that he was killed, he opposed fascism.
It's a long thread, but never has it been more appropriate to post.
1/ "At the moment Kenneth (my Uncle), you are too young to understand this letter, and soon you will be asking lots of questions. Sometime you will understand and will ask, why do we have to do it?"
2/ "Why when life can be such fun do we have to go out and kill people and maybe get killed ourselves? War is a horrible affair. Don’t forget that, in ten years time when they tell you tales of heroism, great and true. It’s horrible, because of blood and wounds and pain"
3/ "because it separates us, sometimes forever, from those we love. But peace can be as horrible as war, for we can be separated too by poverty, by disease, by oppression. People can be together and yet be torn apart by these things. They can be alive and together yet have the"
5/ "happiness of it burnt away by fear and want, by frustration and despair.
So the answer to your question will be a simple one, Kenneth. There are two ways of living. One is full and fine and free and hopeful. With the other, there is no freedom and therefore no hope.
So the answer to your question will be a simple one, Kenneth. There are two ways of living. One is full and fine and free and hopeful. With the other, there is no freedom and therefore no hope.
5/ "The job I’m on is the job opening the door to the first way of living, opening it to all peoples of all colours and races. Fascism shuts and bolts that door. We are fighting to secure the opportunity of building up happier conditions and therefore happier lives."
6/ "Fascism removes and destroys that opportunity. So you see, Kenneth, that there could hardly be a cause more worthy of fighting for or a job more important to do."
7/ "To open a door, to secure an opportunity. But it’s not much good is it, and it’s a waste of lives if when we’ve done this job we don't stride in it through that open door, and seize all the opportunities and use them with both hands to the full."
8/ "That’s the next job - just as important as this job. It'll be a long job, and it won't be done in any single battle. You’ll grow up while it’s being done and you too will be faced with it."
9/ "It’s a job we can never let down on, for if we do that door will quickly slam again in our faces and you, maybe will have to go out and fight to open it. It’s a job that needs courage, just as much as soldiers need it in battle."
10/ "Very likely it’ll need your courage, Kenneth, and if it does remember that all the sacrifices of this war, which you will read about, were made to give you an opportunity, and that you will waste those sacrifices unless you summer the courage to take that opportunity."
11/ "Remember, too, that if you and your generation will allow that door to close again, everything we are setting out to do today will be thrown away. One thing more, you'll hear a lot, some times of the good qualities which war brings out. It’s true in a way."
12/ "Men who are often cowardly in peacetime circumstances are brave in battle. This happens because they depend on each other and because they know it."
13/ "Well then, it can be the same in peace - if we so organise our society so that men work with and not against each other. If we eliminate the conflicts, if we destroy the economic factor that opposes man, to man if we work side by side for the benefit of all."
14/ "It can be done - since great nations have done it already.
So never make courage and loyalty an excuse for war, rather make peace an opportunity for courage and loyalty."
So never make courage and loyalty an excuse for war, rather make peace an opportunity for courage and loyalty."
