We Will Remember Them

Veterans Day dawns early in Kennesaw as my University puts on quite a show for the deserved recipients. Two days of proclomations, parades and speeches to the honored few. I am particularly proud to say my employers pulled out all the stops including a special display of 6300 US flags to demonstrate the service personnel lost in the 10 years between 2001 and 2011.

November 11th is the date of the original World War 1 Armistice which was signed at 11:11am on this date. Unfortunately for all, the terms of which were so egregious on Germany that it set in chain a series of events that irrecovably lead to the rise of the Nazis and World War 2.  

Britain also commemorates its war dead and living on this day but concentrates primarily on the former it has to be said. The poppy is the symbol of British remembrance and is as close as we get to the Stars and Stripes. A group was banned in London this week, calling itself Muslims Against Crusades, whose party piece was setting fire to this little piece of paper which symbolises the poppies that grew in the fields of Flanders were a whole generation of British young men were cut down in minutes of one another in the Battle of the Somme.  Instead of ignoring these boneheads, they are granted notoriety and publicity in the understandable public scorn on their actions.  Being a parent has informed me and my views a lot in the past four years since Vince came along including my attitude to legitimate protest. Like toddlers wanting to stay up and play with their toys past bedtime. There is a time and a place for protest - but veterans day/armistice day isn’t it. It’s not your day, it’s a day for the veterans who are serving us now and those that came before.

As the light broke over the college building, illuminating the frosty grass and fluttering little flags, my thoughts turned to my own relatives and their roles in the war. My mother’s father served in the Royal Air Force, maintaining vital wireless communication for the nimble Spitfire aircraft that would rise to prominance in the Battle of Britain. My other, older, grandfather joined the Home Guard, the British equivilant of the Army Reserve, whose duty it was was to provide security and safety for the populace in Britain whilst the main armed forces were deployed in mainland Europe. He didn’t speak a lot about his wartime adventures. Possibly because there wasn’t a lot to tell although he did impress me once when he mentioned that it was his company’s duty to keep the Prince of Wales safe.  Head filled with pride and boyish dreams that my grandfather was specially selected to guard the personage of the heir to the throne, this was deflated some months later when my dad pointed out that the Prince of Wales was the pub, two streets away from where they lived...

They went with songs to the battle, they were young.

Straight of limb, true of eyes, steady and aglow.

They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted,

They fell with their faces to the foe.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:

Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.

At the going down of the sun and in the morning,

We will remember them.

From ‘For The Fallen’ by Laurence Binyon.

Happy Veterans Day.