My my at Waterloo Napoleon did surrender
Sorry, that was a feeble attempt to make a tenuous link to a previous post (July 18)) about Agnetha Fältskog and Abba.
Here is a photograph I came across on Find My Past UK.
This man, wearing his campaign medal and sitting with his wife, is described as ‘one of the last surviving veterans of the Battle of Waterloo’. There is a worldly weariness about them both, don’t you think?
Wrapped up against the cold. Wrapped up in resignation.
Waterloo took place in 1815, and the photograph is stated to have been taken in 1850. If that date is correct, then there must surely have been other survivors around at the time, particularly when you compare it to the next photograph, which would have been taken around thirty years after the first one. It is dated June 1880.
Only recently we have lost the last surviving veterans from World War One, when living memory faded into historical narrative. Events are no longer within touching distance. It’s a reminder that all of us are just passing through eras, be they times of peace or times of war.
Periods phase out, the world keeps on turning. We all move on, casting shadows.
And I have met my destiny in quite a simil-NO!! That’s Abba again!
Forget Eurovision everybody. Pass safely through this weekend, earning your own medals and plaudits. May your shadows be long.
See you on the flip side.
City Jackdaw 
That couple is scary, I think…
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I know what you mean. In the old days they didn’t smile for the camera, which lends an air of menace.
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Perhaps the date was wrong on the first photo? Or he was the last person in his area to have survived Waterloo?
A guy at my church died some years ago. He was a veteran of WWII and used to march in the parades. And my uncle died last year—a veteran of the Viet Nam war. So I can’t help thinking of how we’re losing vets of those wars (especially WWII).
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That is true. Every year at Remembrance Sunday parades the number of vets from that era gets smaller and smaller.
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