Women’s War in Words

Imperial War Museum London

Wednesday 24th March 2004

Any form of memorialisation falls flat against the actual experience; especially when that experience is of war.  However, the tenuous balance between the desire to forget and the need to remember renders commemoration essential.  Monuments have been erected and remembrance days held, but nothing may compete with the power of words and the emotion that they convey. 

Hence, in an evening of poetry, readings and song, Geraldine James, June Whitfield and Barbara Dickson paid tribute to those who gave their services and their lives in the two world wars.  However, the evening was especially distinctive because it was dedicated to women.  The recent recognition of the lack of memorials devoted to the female war generation was an essential motivation in The Imperial War Museum’s new exhibition ‘Women and War’.  Hence, in collaboration with this, ‘Women’s War in Words’ emphasised this fundamental recognition, whilst amalgamating their crucial role with the emotion these women experienced.

The armchairs and floor lamp that accommodated the three women on stage, their bound manuscripts that seemed like storybooks, and the informal tone that they assumed served to provide a relaxed feel to the evening, and although it seems an impossible task, the story they told was at once poignant and horrific, and yet strangely consoling, the solidarity they conveyed shining above all else.  The audience was taken through a significant fraction of memories, the distressing sitting alongside the spirited, memories of familial separation adjoining children’s nursery rhymes mocking Hitler’s power. 

The audience was invited to join the singing of the familiar ‘Hey Little Hen’, whilst other accounts could only have been recognised by the authors who experienced them.  There were moments of silence and moments of laughter, the alliance of which created a unique memorialisation and above all else, a memorialisation whose individuality could only have been achieved through the intimacy of word.

Many thanks to all involved for initiating such a significant and thought-provoking evening.

Rebecca Hanna-Grindall

Sydenham High School (1986 - 2000)

 

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