In America, it's known as Veterans Day, in France Armistice day, in Britain and Canada Remembrance Day, but whatever you call it, it is a day for us to pause and reflect on the conflicts that have passed, and the lives that have been lost, that have so violently shaped our nations for a century.
It can be easy to take for granted the freedom and relative peace that we experience each day in our respective nations and what it took to get to this place. We like to think we live in troubled times, but taking a moment to reflect I can scarcely imagine what my great grandparents must have thought about their time. Hitler was on the doorstep of Britain, beckoning to invade, Europe completely overun. How did he feel as he flew his glider on D-Day 1944 to land at Pegasus Bridge. What stories might I have heard, what lessons might I have learned had he not died very shortly after my birth. A picture of him and his uniform adorns the Pegasus Bridge Memorial in Normandy.
Many people have stories like these, World War One and Two especially enrolled entire Generations in war, whether it was at home or abroad it left no one untouched, it left so many families without sons, brothers, fathers and husbands. It brought us face to face with the most gruesome and bloody episodes of human nature, not only on the battlefield, but as Russian and Allied armies discovered Concentration camps where human beings were eliminated in a cold and industrial fashion that shook the very core of our humanity, and brought forth with it a trial for it's perpetrators that was to be the first of it's kind, and ushered in a new era in International Law.
The soldiers that served day after day in muddy trenches, that stormed the beaches of Normandy, that braved island after island of the Pacific Ocean, that pushed through the hills of Korea, that on this day fight together in the Mountains and valleys of Afghanistan, whatever ones feelings are on the conflicts, our service men and women deserve our respect and our gratitude for doing a job most of us simply could not do. They are our shield, our core, that defend our nation, our people and most importantly our democracy.
To all those who died, we remember you and we will never forget you.
To all our allied service men and women, wherever they may be throughout the globe, know that we are thinking of you and we are grateful for what you do everyday.
Lest we forget
That's the word, I stick to it.
Jetboogieman