It is easy to think of the current pandemic as an enemy, and much of the rhetoric of our leaders has centred on words like “invasion”, “fight”, “struggle”, “foreign” and the like, with Trump (of course) being the most naturally xenophobic, racist and unreasonable in his characterization of the virus.  He is the most belligerent and bellicose, missing (of course) the irony inherent in his being someone who ducked military service in Viet Nam though the fictional ‘bone spurs’ – when he had the opportunity to demonstrate his ‘real’ militarism, he chickened out.  It is characteristic of the coward that he is, that his previous ‘war’ was on undocumented immigrants, and of course the Mexican ‘rapists’, ‘murderers’ and ‘drug dealers’.  A war conducted, as all his ‘wars’ are from the safety of the White House and the golf course.

     In my case Conscription ended in 1960, when I was ten, and Harold Wilson did not take the UK into the Viet Nam War.  All other wars and skirmishes were dealt with by the regular army-  I could, as a charmed Baby Boomer, go through life with social silver spoon in my ever open mouth!  Or at least, given the circumstances of a person growing up in the UK nowadays, it certainly seems that the metaphor is not too far-fetched.

     The preparations and reactions to the virus by the governments around the world certainly put one in mind of armed conflict, indeed the Coward Trump has directly compared the (eventual) state of preparedness that his contemptable administration has been forced to accept is tantamount to War.

     As pronouncements are broadcast and ever more stringent positions are adopted to cope with the virus, it is difficult not to think in terms of General Mobilization.  

     The inspiration for this poem is directly stated in the opening stanza: it did cross my mind. And then the rest followed.

     I write from the point of view of a Baby Boomer born in 1950, five years after the end of World War II, and a being who began to take note of his surrounding and more importantly remember what he saw in about 1953/4.  When I was growing up in a suburb of Cardiff there were still ruins from the war in parts of the city; the war figured large in television and film; the war and its aftermath still defined who we thought that we were.  It took the Suez Crisis (that I do remember in my own child-centred way) to put us firmly in our ‘second-rank-and-falling’ state that has possibly culminated in the collective idiocy of Brexit.

     From the point of view of the generation now coming up to school leaving age (without doing their final exams?) my generation had a charmed way through life in Britain.

     My father was sporty (he captained the school rugby team when he was in the third form) and clever (he came top in his class in his grammar school – though that achievement was noted by his form teacher as, “Top out of a mediocre lot.  Reflects nothing of his ability, he’s slapdash, erratic and easy-going” to which my grandfather response after reading this assessment was, “That man know you!”) and when he should have gone to St Luke’s College to become a PE teacher he went into the RAF instead and eventually spent his war in Africa.  When he came back to this country he was in his twenties, his ‘college years’ gone.  He was one-year emergency trained as a teacher and he found himself a job.

     The differences between my father’s generation and my own are instructive.  My father’s brother was a Bren gun carrier who was ‘mopping up’ through Germany towards the end of the war: he didn’t talk much about his horrific experiences; my mother’s brother was deeply scarred by his experiences of being evacuated from France after Dunkirk, though towards the end of his life he was a witty raconteur about his absurd times in the army.  What did we Baby Boomers have to put beside this?  And what real threats had we had to contend with?

     I use an echo of the phrasing from a character in the BBC television series ‘Dad’s Army’ as the title for this poem because I wanted to bring in the sense of muddling unreality yet ultimate success that the series seemed to encapsulate, and I think that that attitude is now being applied to the virus: excitement tinged with pleasurable cinematic disaster-movie fear.

     The end of the poem asks a question.  To which I have no answer.

“Covid-19, Mr. Mainwaring, Sir!”

It crossed my mind

this virus is the war

we baby boomers

never had.

We missed conscription,

so, The War was second-hand

with scraps passed on

from first-hand sources in our homes.

Music, names and words and thoughts:

spivs, blackout, Vera Lynne, Dunkirk,

Black Market, Blitz, and rationing,

and mind my bike, put out the light!

No, that’s Othello, not a warden’s words.

And, that’s the point.

I went to college

at the age my dad went to the RAF.

Free milk before,

fees paid for then,

and job ahead

for we, we happy few –

and pension too.

But now, malign, omnivorous

(and our specific age group in its sights)

this virus comes to spoil the tale.

I once asked mum

if she had ever thought        

in darkest days of war

that we could face defeat?

“Not once!” she said.

Not once, in spite of all that

sleek, repulsive, Nazi chic

that seemed to ooze efficiency

against inept Dad’s Armoury!

Not once. 

A phrase of confidence and faith,

or blind delusion based on hope?

Or all of the above, and more?

And do I have to choose?