Friday, November 11, 2011

Remembrance Day - 11.11.11

The eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, in 1918 the 'war to end all wars', aka world war one, ended. And almost one hundred years later, we're still fighting.  It's been a bloody century.

But on the eleventh day of the eleventh month we remember. 

I'm a sentimental fool. Thinking about Remembrance Day always makes me teary eyed. The unimaginable sacrifice of fighting and dying, and even of living, that our armed forces make and have made, for all us civilians, gets me every time.

We owe our soldiers a debt we can never pay.

They've put our lives in front of their own. Whether they see action or not. Whether you agree with their deployment or not. By the very act of becoming a soldier, they have put our lives, our way of life, before their own.

Thank you seems so pale, so inadequate. But I say thank you, nonetheless.

I pray to Fria that our younger generations are taught about the horrors of war, that they are taught what we all have to be thankful for. That they, that we, never forget.

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

No comments: