[Afamilyatwar-list] Don¹t Mine Me

[john at johnfinch.com]

On 2017-12-22 03:04, Veit, Richard via Afamilyatwar-list wrote:
> Hi, Scott and Others.
> 
> Just my opinion, but to me it seemed as if the naval commander and his
> lover had resolved to enter into a suicide pact, knowing full well that
> the minefield would almost certainly kill them both at the same time. 
> This
> was an extramarital affair because the naval commander's wife later
> attended his funeral. Likewise, the woman was said to be the wife of 
> the
> local squire. Perhaps they both saw theirs as a hopeless love and 
> decided
> to end it all in an instant. Personally, I saw their deaths as 
> 'realistic'
> rather than 'metaphorical' but only writer John Finch can tell us for 
> sure.
> 
> Richard Veit
> 
> 
> On 12/21/17, 5:11 PM, "Scott Filderman via Afamilyatwar-list"
> <Afamilyatwar-list at baylor.edu> wrote:
> 
>> In Episode 38, in which the military man and civilian woman stroll 
>> down
>> the (signed) minefield and, in spite of Tony¹s agonized shouting to 
>> come
>> back, get themselves blown up, I wondered if this was a ³metaphorical²
>> death (relative to the many relationships in the series that blow up) 
>> or
>> a ³realistic² one (strange that a military man should ignore such a 
>> plain
>> warning and head toward a Wagnerian Liebestod)? Yes, people die all 
>> sorts
>> of unexpected ways in war, but this isn¹t a documentary, it¹s a 
>> planned
>> series, and so.... (And again, to say what a wonderful series Mr. 
>> Finch
>> created!)
>> 
>> Scott Filderman
>> 
>> Sent from my iPhone
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A good question, as is so frequently said.   At the back of my mind was 
the need at some point in the series to express an awareness of the 
wartime attitude to death.  "Eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we 
die."
It is obviously realistic, but arises out of an expression, as so many 
did in wartime, of a way of coping with the reality. You could see it 
happening in the brief relationships people adopted on railway journeys, 
or as a release/ excuse from the sexual embargoes of peacetime. For 
some, like the two in the episode,  the reality is something they have 
difficulty living with.  A t a (later) point when Frank is killed on his 
last op, someone (Grace's brother) takes over without what would 
normally be called 'a decent interval'.Actually it was based on a real 
incident someone described to me.     JOHN