BBC TV "WDYTYA?" Series 10 Episode #3 - Patrick Stewart

[baggygenes]

I think that if I were in Patrick Stewart's position, I would have liked to find something endearing too. 

yes .. finding or believing a reason for someone being the way they were may exorcise a few ghosts - I don't blame him at all I think I would want the same thing in his position.  That is what I found quite sad about the programme.

[perth tiger]

This lassie found herself severely stressed, she found the courage to face him in court, no doubt at her parents insistence. Financial hardship was the name of the game here, if her mother wouldn't keep the child she would have to maintain him herself which involved full time work to keep a house with all that entails, and meantime  who looks after the child? if he was taken into care she was liable to pay maintenance, failure to do so could result in a jail sentence.
Unlike thousands of others, Stewart's father returned from France without a scratch, many more never returned at all or spent the rest of the war in captivity.
 There was no shortage of folk on both sides of the Atlantic who thought Dunkirk was the end of the war. Britain would sue for peace, Hitler picked up enough abandoned weapons to equip an army and some establishment figures here thought enough was enough.
 Our hero was a user & abuser, the war provided an escape, not an excuse.
 

good to see you know so much about him. maybe you should have helped the producers out with some background

[Guy Etchells]

I found the bit about his father's account on the hand in the train window very enlightening.
That shows to me classic shell-shock trauma.

Cheers
Guy

[Mavals]

The programme gave us lots to think about in relation to armed combatants returning to "normal" civilian life. It is an unfortunate fact that many of the combat veterans of the Gulf and Afghan wars suffer all kinds of mental disorders, substance abuse an domestic violence etc and are unable to settle back into civilian life after the horrors they have witnessed and undoubtedly it was the same for Arthur and his generation.

We did not get much information about Arthur's role in civilian life, but perhaps he was also frustrated by the lack of opportunities in civilian life, unlike in his army career. Many working class men, including my own father, learned skills in military life which stood them in good stead in civvy street. But if your skills and talents were unappreciated, added to the stress of combat, no doubt  many other men behaved as Arthur did.

The failure of medical staff to recognise mental distress and the stigma of being diagnosed as a "head case" would have deterred many from seeking the help they needed .

Mavals

[carol8353]

I would have liked them to find out more about Alfred's childhood,his temper cannot all be put down to his war experiences surely? It must have had deeper roots than that?

[baggygenes]

I would have liked them to find out more about Alfred's childhood,his temper cannot all be put down to his war experiences surely? It must have had deeper roots than that?

I think the first join up with the regimental police hinted that it took a certain type of person and character which was what made me a little sceptical that his abuse could be completely put down to PTSD

[Lollster]

I think that the people that have featured in the programmes have had many different reasons for doing it, this particular programme concentrated on the one big question in Patricks life that he wanted an answer to, for each programme to follow the same set pattern would become rather boring. Some end with happy reunions with long lost family, Bruce Forsythe for instance and some end with sadness, Jerry springer springs to mind when he was reunited with a cousin after a programme which explored his Jewish family and looked at the persecution they went through. I know more about my distant ancestors than I do about my grandmother and grandfather so I can see why the latest programme was made In this way.

[Guyana]

For me, the programme illustrated what complex characters we often are.
His father's service with the Regimental Police, a role which in my experience often attracts the bullies. To relate the story of the hand out of the window to a child of five or six, seemed to me rather strange. However, he must have had condiderable ability as a soldier, to have been accepted into the Parachute Regt. at that age, and to have risen in rank as he did, even in wartime. I regret I did not find him likeable, but my own father had faults which I found difficult to accept, all of which highlights some fault in me also.

[weste]

Skoosh , baggygenes and danuslave i think those are real slant on things.