Here’s a story about the Korean War: a group of British soldiers were under attack from a Chinese force. The British were outnumbered, surrounded, trying to hold an indefensible position. Whatever the details, the situation was dire. The British commanding officer radioed for reinforcements, explaining that he and his chaps were in a bit of a tight spot. The request for help was received by some Americans, who were close enough and in great enough numbers to come to the rescue. Despite this, they arrived too late and discovered most of their allies slaughtered.
This story is usually carted out to illustrate the language divide that separates the two nations, but I think it’s about more than just pants and trousers. Whoever received that message didn’t misunderstand its content, they misunderstood its tone; they missed the urgency. After all, when an American officer is under attack and is terrified that his men are about to be blown up and shot to pieces he shouts down the radio about asses getting whooped and things being FUBAR (I know Paul doesn’t like swearing in his blog so to explain: the last three words of that acronym are ‘beyond all recognition’ . Also, it may be a phrase from Vietnam but the point is still sound). A tight spot, for an American officer, is two burst tires on his jeep, not imminent destruction.
The point I’m lumbering towards here is that the British aren’t more brave or more calm than their American counterparts, they’re just more ironic. Emotions might be embarrassing to a British person but we’ve still got to express them, so we step to one side and point them out as we would an interestingly shaped hedge. This was demonstrated in every vox pop after the London bombings: we heard a calm description of a flash of light, a loud bang, screaming and it all being rather frightening. The odd thing is that these people weren’t pretending to not be scared. If you’d asked ‘But weren’t you terrified out of your wits?’ they would have answered ‘Yes, of course, it was absolutely dreadful’. You might have thought they were having you on but that would be to misunderstand the subdued tone of their response.
I was in London two weeks ago and everyone told me they were afraid to get on the tube, and that the atmosphere was strange and unsettling but frankly I didn’t feel it, commuting in the miniscule trains along with everyone else. There was less of a police presence than here in New York and I didn’t notice anyone with a rucksack attracting attention. I’m sure people who’d been in town for both sets of bombings still felt their disquiet but they had already begun to step to one side of it, a death-shaped puddle on the way to work.
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Usually in August central London is crammed with tourists, but that’s just not the case now, and you can now generally get a seat on the tube, which is unusual. I presume the only people travelling are those who don’t have a choice.