A Call To Peace

11 November 2014Calder M, Privett '15

Calder M, Privett ’15 addressed the school today during our Remembrance Day Ceremony and spoke of his family’s military service. Below is his text: I run the soft carpet through my five year old hands. My granddad sits wounded. Wounded not only physically, but mentally. Maimed by his memories. Barely escaping death. My Scottish great-grandfather grew up in fear during the First World War, often hidden away, as the siren rang death. He later served in the British Navy during the Second World War, fighting for our freedom, fighting for a way to live. On the other side of my family, during the Second World War, my German great-grandfather was a prisoner of war in the United Kingdom for two years. Contrary to death camps of Germany, he spoke positively of his experience as prisoner of war in England and Scotland. My paternal granddad, Sergeant Major Robert Mackintosh, was born in Scotland and grew up during the Second World War. He was conscripted to join the British Army in 1953. He was 18 years old. His first overseas assignment as a solider of the Black Watch, The Royal Regiment of Scotland, was in Africa in the late 1950s. Their goal was to keep peace and to intervene during the Mao Mao uprising, to stop this Kenyan tribe from massacring thousands of men, women and children. Beginning in 1963, my grand-dad spent almost seven years in jungle warfare throughout many of the islands off Malaysia and Singapore. His regiment’s purpose was to stop Malaysia and Singapore from being invaded by neighboring Indonesia as Singapore sought independence. After Singapore, where my dad was born, my grand-dad was transferred with his young family to West Berlin. These were the Cold War years, and his job was to maintain the military presence of the British, Americans, French and Russians. It took 28 years, until 1989, for the Iron Curtain of the Berlin Wall to fall and start the liberation of the former Eastern block countries. My grand-dad served with the British special forces and spent a number of years on numerous missions around the world and comleted several tours of Northern Ireland during ‘the troubles’. My dad said he and his siblings never knew where Grand-dad was: lost in grief, “Where is my dad?” they asked. All they could do was pray… pray he would come home safely each time. My dad said that he and his two sisters used to wait anxiously in a military camp waiting room each month for a 5-minute call from his dad somewhere in the world. They were fortunate: the telephone always rang. My dad went to a Scottish military boarding school from the age of 11 and was headed to Sandhurst Military College in 1982 to follow in his father’s and grandfather’s footsteps, and travel the world. Many of my dad’s friends took this route and today are high ranking officers; however, my dad, Andy Mackintosh, made the decision to decline his offer from Sandhurst because so many of his school friends’ fathers had been killed in action during his time at school. War has far-reaching effects beyond the frontline. These effects are incomprehensible for most of us here today. My grand-dad was a quiet, unassuming and selfless man. He served his country, supported his military family around the globe as his dad did before him, in the hope of creating a safer and more peaceful world. This year my cousin James will be taking after the Mackintosh tradition of military service. I ask you to keep not only my cousin but the thousands of other soldiers and civilians in your mind as he is deployed first to Kenya, and later to Afghanistan. With so much sadness and pain in our small world today, I would like to leave you with my Call to Peace and I have found these words that I believe to be appropriate. They were written by the Indian born poet and writer, Sri Chinmey: “World peace can be achieved, When, In each person, the Power of Love, replaces the Love of Power. Calder M, Privett ‘15

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