Remembering for remembrance 100

Remembrance Day or Armistice is meant to be a day of remembering that came about following WW1.

My grandfather fought in the Battle of Somme. He was gased in the trenches and died earlier than he would have because of the bad chest he went on to have for the rest of his life.

When I was at school we studied this poem. It had a profound affect on me.

Dulce et Decorum Est
BY WILFRED OWEN
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime.—
Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

Notes:
Latin phrase is from the Roman poet Horace: “It is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country.”

I was fortunate enough to listen to an old man tell me about his experience of the D-Day landings and the horror he witnessed and experienced. That man suffered PTSD for the rest of his life. He had never spoken of his war time experience to anyone before. He was by then in his 80’s. I had the privilege of collecting his tears and honouring his story.

My father lied about his age to join the Navy and fight in WW2. My father-in-law, a German man, was rounded up by Hitler when he was 14 and sent to the front line. He was captured by the British and became a POW. At the end of the war he was sent home to his mum. It’s so strange that both these men ended up in my immediate family. Had they met during the war they would have killed each other. Instead they met at family dos and shared a drink together.

I believe some of my fathers problems stem from the awful experiences he had as a teenager during the war years. In that respect, I too have paid the price of war.

I am a pacifist because I believe we have to find peaceful ways to resolve conflict. The bible says Thou shalt not kill. War often doesn’t decide who’s right but who’s left. It’s destructive tentacles reach on into future generations and so many lives are blighted.

During the silence I will be remembering all those I’ve mentioned. I will also remember those shot for cowardice, the conscientious objectors, women and children raped as a tool of war still to this day, the so called collateral damage of millions of civilians, soldiers on all sides, those in unmarked graves and the politicians who order armies in but don’t always learn the futility of war as opposed to military strategists who do.

In the last 100 years there has only been 1 year where a British soldier hasn’t been killed. That in itself is a shocking statistic. WW1 was meant to be the war to end all wars. When will we learn?