What would D-Day heroes make of today’s snowflake generation? Judith Woods ****
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/life/would-d-day-heroes-make-todays-snowflake-generation/
When my children were little and attempted to run through traffic or step heedlessly between parked cars into the road, I would invariably grab them and scold: “Girls, some things are worth dying for. Freedom, democracy, human rights, that sort of thing; catching a bus is definitely not one of them.”
This week’s D-Day commemorations have thrown into sharp relief the servicemen slain in battle 75 years ago in the cause of freedom. Selflessness, courage, a belief that justice must prevail were the forces that drove a generation of young men to lay down their lives so we might live ours in freedom.
Our gaze has necessarily been focussed on the past, the pomp, circumstance and pride of victory shot through with grief over fallen comrades and the senseless slaughter that continued even as the Second World War drew to its only possible conclusion.
But as the strains of The Last Post echoed away. I found myself wondering what those brave airmen, sailors and soldiers would think of us, and the 21st-century freedoms we hold so dear.
Would those who landed on Omaha Beach in a hail of German gunfire, death raining down on them salute us for being worthy of their sacrifice?
I’d rather not know the answer, to be quite honest. I’d like to think they would recognise Britain as a tolerant, democratic society, upholding the values they fought for in which equality is the golden standard.
But what would they make of enraged snowflake students calling for “trigger warnings” over a passage set in the GCSE English exam?
This week, an unseen excerpt from H.E. Bates’s classic novel The Mill was included in the AQA English Literature test. Later in the book, a character is raped by her employer, so even though the passage made no reference to abuse, its inclusion was enough to spark a hissy fit.
That the “offending” exam board responded not with the curricular equivalent of a clip round the ear but an apology, would no doubt leave Generation Dunkirk slack-jawed in disbelief.
It is no bad thing that we are less deferential to authority than we were in 1944. Calling power to account is now woven into the fabric of our nation and quite rightly so; what I think those brave, steadfast servicemen would find most shocking is the lack of emotional resilience, moral fibre and sense of duty among their counterparts today.
There has been a profound shift away from shouldering responsibility in favour of demanding rights; every last millennial in the land sees themself as worthy of special treatment, special pleading.
It’s all about the individual, never about the group. And if you haven’t got any perceptible contribution to make to the world, you can always Be Offended. Not at man’s inhumanity to man – that’s a bit heavy for modern sensibilities. Gelatine in bank notes is a good one, or the discriminatory signs on the doors of the Ladies.
Being upset – by a GCSE passage, by other people’s opinions, by the need to knuckle down and get on with life – has been elevated to a quasi-religious belief system. Try explaining that to the 6th Airborne Division securing the left flank of Operation Overlord.
The Army is currently around 5,000 short of its 82,500 target of trained soldiers. God knows what Generation Dunkirk would have made of the recent recruitment campaign that targeted “snowflakes, phone zombies, binge gamers, selfie addicts and me, me, millennials” trapped in “boring jobs”.
A controversial approach – but it worked. In the first three weeks of January this year, applications to join the army rose to 9,700 – a five-year high.
Which is all well and good, but I’m not sure how I feel about entrusting national security to social media influencers, much less expecting the lactose-intolerant, no-platforming brigade to rise to the challenges of a D-Day scenario.
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