Ukraine Dispatch 5 | Cometh the Hour, Cometh the Man
Ukraine Dispatches
Ukraine Dispatch 5: Cometh the Hour, Cometh the Man - An Overview
Précis of Ukraine Dispatch 5
This dispatch, written by Kenneth Thomas Webb on February 27, 2022, reflects on the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Key points:
Introduction: The author draws parallels between the current situation and the outbreak of World War II, emphasizing the importance of leadership during such crises.
Chapter 1: Webb condemns the invasion as a power grab by a tyrant unfit for office, comparing Putin to Hitler and Mussolini.
Chapter 2: He criticizes Russia's media control and highlights the humanity shown by Ukraine in allowing captured Russians to contact their families.
Chapter 3: Webb fears this invasion could be the first step towards a wider war.
Chapter 4: The author praises Ukrainian President Zelensky's leadership and hopes it continues.
Title: "Cometh the Hour, Cometh the Man" suggests a time of crisis calls for a strong leader, a phrase in wide use in 1940 as regards Winston Churchill being invited by King George VI to form a government of national unity in light of the Blitzkrieg earlier that morning ~ 10 May 1940 ~ and which resulted in the loss of confidence in, and resignation of, the prime minister, Neville Chamberlain.
Overall, the dispatch expresses outrage at the invasion and admiration for Ukrainian resilience.
It also reflects on the historical significance of the event and the potential for wider conflict.
Additional details:
The author references his personal experience learning about World War II in school.
He criticizes the lack of transparency in Russian media.
The dispatch includes a quote from Ursula von der Leyen praising Zelenskyy's leadership.
It is important to note this is just one perspective on the conflict, as the author firmly advises throughout the Ukraine Dispatches.
Volume 1 2022
In the grim and grievous moments of this solemn hour
a task is set before us.
There is a quickening in the tissue and the fibre of every soul.
Introduction
I WRITE these words from my home in Gloucestershire. This stanza I pluck from a long distant memory in my teenage years at Monkscroft School in Cheltenham (in the 1960s) when studying the outbreak of World War II.
I have never been able to find these words, even the Internet search remains silent. I hope, perhaps, one day that I’ll come across my school notes in the family archive. It matters not, but I emphasise that this quote is certainly not from my pen. It seems to be Churchillian and Shakespearian.
What does matter is that they have been the foundation stone upon which my entire life has rested these five score years and ten.
Through expert teachers, for me, literature and history combined to visit upon me the awfulness of the hour when the world went to war on Sunday, September 3, 1939.
Chapter One
Tonight, 21 February 2022, is once again a grim and grievous moment in this solemn hour.
Even though we knew it would happen, we hoped and prayed that diplomacy and reason would prevail.
The world has been subjected to the gross manifestation of omnipotence so ugly, so vile, so wretched, as to stand up on the world stage in the ugliest seat of all – the Kremlin – in a choreographed piece of theatre, that refuses to recognise the sovereignty of an independent nation, but states that that nation’s peoples belong to Russia and will be taken back into Russia, and regardless of the outcome.
A rambling discourse by a man unfit for high office, a middle ranker, a despised intelligence functionary, who has crushed all opposition to him, has authorised summary executions of thousands, whose equal is found in one solitary figure … Adolf Hitler.
For he has this night served notice that his dream of restoring Soviet Russia serves notice also upon all those sovereign nations who freed themselves when the old, corrupt, inept Soviet Union imploded.
This man is the gross manifestation of another miscreant. Just as he is a 21st Century version of Hitler, so, too, is he a 21st Century version of Benito Mussolini. That man, too, craved a long-gone empire. Mark well how Italy dealt with that dictator when reality stared the ordinary Italian People in the face. Benito and his mistress were summarily executed by the people, and their bodies were left strung up, upside down, on a lamppost at the height of World War Two.
Chapter Two
It is now approaching the midnight hour, the end of Day Four of the Invasion of Ukraine by Russia. Within Russia, all news outlets are forbidden to use the words ‘invasion’, ‘attack’ or ‘assault’.
If they do, they will be outlawed.
That should tell the Russian People much about what is being done, being done in their name, but which they are not privy to.
In an interview on the BBC this morning, Sunday, 27 February 2022, Mr Vadym Prystaiko, Ukraine’s Ambassador to the United Kingdom, confirmed that there were Russian casualties. Rightly, the Ambassador would not be drawn on numbers, though it does run into four figures, but explained that many casualties were obviously anxious about contacting their families and loved ones at home. But no arrangements had been made, so Ukraine, despite being engaged in an aggressive war of defence against Russia, is attempting to establish a contact line, to at least enable families in Russia to make contact. Russia has made no such arrangement.
Mr Vadym Prystakio, Ukraine’s Ambassador to the United Kingdom
In my archival work, I have discovered much about my four uncles killed in the last two world wars. In World War II, there was an efficient system that enabled my parents to each learn that they had lost their brothers on the evening of the day that each had been killed in action. In each case, this was at the height of total war.
I mention this only to emphasise the humanity of the Ukrainian People that I constantly see on the United Kingdom BBC and ITV News channels.
Chapter Three
Four days ago, in my personal notes, I wrote that history would record Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as the opening gambit in World War III.
When Vladimir Putin made a television broadcast – once again, so carefully choreographed I wonder whether he has had some ‘elevental’ tuition from a long-gone Dr Goebbels – seated in his lounge suit with his two defence chiefs looking decidedly unsure of themselves as they stared into the lens with a ‘can this really be happening?’ look … that the tyrant had been forced by NATO aggression to place his forces on full nuclear alert.
Chapter Four
President Volodymyr Zelensky has already proved his outstanding leadership, a factor very strongly emphasised by Ursula von der Leyen, the President of the European Commission, today, Sunday 27 February 2022.
Long, long may this continue.
Cometh the Hour, Cometh the Man
Republished 17 April 2024
27 February 2022
All Rights Reserved
LIVERPOOL
© 2024 Kenneth Thomas Webb
Footnote
The banner image is captured on a screenshot of the BBC World News Live Feed on my television screen, today during President Zelensky’s daily brief to the People of Ukraine and the World Community
With thanks to the British Broadcasting Corporation Live Newsfeed.
© 2022 Kenneth Thomas Webb © BBC 2022
Ken Webb is a writer and proofreader. His website, kennwebb.com, showcases his work as a writer, blogger and podcaster, resting on his successive careers as a police officer, progressing to a junior lawyer in succession and trusts as a Fellow of the Institute of Legal Executives, a retired officer with the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve, and latterly, for three years, the owner and editor of two lifestyle magazines in Liverpool.
He also just handed over a successful two year chairmanship in Gloucestershire with Cheltenham Regency Probus.
Pandemic aside, he spends his time equally between his city, Liverpool, and the county of his birth, Gloucestershire.
In this fast-paced present age, proof-reading is essential. And this skill also occasionally leads to copy-editing writers’ manuscripts for submission to publishers and also student and post graduate dissertations.
