On the Eleventh Hour of the Eleventh Day of the Eleventh Month, Nineteen Hundred and Eighteen, World War I officially ended.
Remembrance Day (also known as Veteran’s Day or Armistice Day in the U.S.) commemorates the armistice signed between the Allied Forces and Germany on that day, 11th of November, 1918.
In 2009, the three last British soldiers who fought in that war died. It is a testament to their courage that they spent the last years of their lives trying to educate others about the horrors of war.
Harry Patch who was one hundred and eleven, when he died last July, once said: -
“I didn’t welcome the war at all, and never felt the need to get myself into khaki and go out there fighting before it was ‘all over by Christmas.’ That’s what people were saying, that the war wouldn’t last long.”
It lasted a lot longer and he saw horrors no human being should be exposed to. So it is no surprise that he strongly believed that the war could have been avoided and was unjustified. It was a traumatic and undoubtedly complicated event at best and I am not the least bit qualified to pass judgment on his beliefs. I can only admire this man’s will to live and overwhelming desire to survive that enabled him to pull through that tumultuous era.
In 2007 at a Remembrance Day ceremony, Harry Patch said that he was “humbled that he should be representing an entire generation.” He went on to make the following statement: -
“Today is not for me. It is for the countless millions who did not come home with their lives intact. They are the heroes.”
That says it all.
I believe that war doesn’t accomplish anything, however I am not really qualified to come up with a more effective alternative. Sanctions are weak and with some of these more aggressive nations completely ineffective.
Still I am a supporter of the soldiers and recognize the terrible job they have to do. I don’t think I could do it myself.