Debt of Honour

When thinking about the upcoming Remembrance Day ceremonies and what I wanted to say about it, I found myself casting about a bit for some sort of relevance. A story that I can relate as to why Remembrance Day is meaningful to me, a connection beyond the simple fact that I do hold the day as sacred, maybe more so than any other "stat" day that is graciously bestowed upon us by the powers that be. But I don't...I don't have a grandfather that fought and died for our country in World War Two or a distant uncle or cousin that lost his life in Korea or Afghanistan. That lack of a tangible and specific connection to the horrors of war does not diminish the incredible amount of respect and gratitude I have for the people that have chosen to make sacrifices for our nation. Whatever their reasons for enlisting were, be it a sense of duty, patriotic fervour or simply for a way forward, these men and women put themselves in harms way for us and I think they deserve every possible measure of our respect. 

I try to imagine what it must have been like, taking a boy of my sons age and placing him in one of the hundreds of landing craft making that journey across the channel to the beaches of Normandy. All of 18 years old, knowing that the chances of survival were small, that death was near...the vision is unsettling, the reality must have been terrifying. The opening scene of Saving Private Ryan was supposed to have come close to depicting the horror of those first few hours...I'm sure it was worse, exponentially so.

I think it's easy to romanticize the idea of going to war to fight tyranny and evil personified in Hitler; to fight the good fight if you will, but reality strikes like a thousand knives when you are faced with the inescapable laws of physics. Bone and muscle are no match for fire and metal. And in that moment, when the realization comes that you may not get out of that fox hole alive is when, I think, the most heroic of all things happen...you move forward anyway. That's how Hitler was beaten, the sacrifice of many to stop an "ism" Getting up, despite the fear, together with your brothers in arms, and fighting for every foot of dirt.

Land and sea strewn with the wreckage of humanity, and lost amongst the carnage and totality of war is the warrior returning home to fight again. All too often suffering in silence, living with the memories, the severe shock to the psyche. We owe a debt of honour to all of these people, every last one of them, to help and support them. Always and forever.

Spare more than a moment, look around at the unbelievable amount of freedom that we take for granted. See how blessed we are when you consider the suffering at the hands of modern day Hitler's around the world....this freedom was guaranteed and won through sacrifice and through blood. Honour that unwritten covenant with those that died.

We will remember them