Poppy Day 2011

Hi Everyone.

My regular readers will know that I celebrate Remembrance Sunday every year.  11.11.1918 is a day that shaped my life as I grew up.  So many men that were within close living memory had gone off to war and never returned.

Remembrance Sunday was observed every year by my father.  Both my grandfathers fought in the "war to end all wars".  Millions never returned to their home towns, or to their loved ones.

This year is an especially poignant observance as it is the first year since that day that there has not been a known surviving combatant to watch the observance ceremonies.  5 May 2011 saw the death of the last of the known 70 million combatants.  Claude Choules died at the age of 110, just months after the death of the last known American U.S. veteran – Charles Buckles who also died at the age of 110.

World War 1 saw the death of almost 35 million people.  It was a war that changed Europe, and arguably the world, from then on.  It changed the fabric of life within England, and much of Europe.  It saw the formation of countries that had hitherto never before existed;  it caused immeasurable pain, anguish, hardship and left a legacy that should never be forgotten.  With the death of Claude Choules the first World War effectively passed from living memory.  

My father fought in World War II.  A war that saw casualty numbers more than double that seen in World War 1.  A young man, not quite 17, signed up to fight for his country.  He went into the war a chubby cheeked young boy and emerged a weary, world-wise, forever scarred man of 26.  A man who had seen things that no-one should ever have seen.  It was kill or be killed.  Hand to hand combat.  A war fought in the jungles of Burma. A war that saw him taken as a POW by the Japanese.  

Every year as a child I went with my father to purchase a poppy that he wore proudly on his lapel.  H would place money into collection tins for injured veterans and we would finally  visit the cenotaph to pay his respects.  Every year I watched my father – a man who rarely showed emotion – shed a tear.  Ever since my father's death nearly 30 years ago I have continued to try to  continue that legacy and pay homage to those who have lost their lives in battle.

Tonight, I had intended to share a poem from one of my favorite World War I poets, Wilfred Owen. However, tonight, when I checked my email, I found that my best friend Pam had sent me a poem that she had penned.  I hope she won't mind me sharing this beautiful poem with you.  It is a poem that so beautifully expresses the life of so many in working class England at the time.  An incredible reflection of how so many that were lost were men who had so little in life.  Had seen so little, yet sacrificed so much. How bravery often came from those in the trenches.

Pam was inspired to write this ode by a photograph owned by her grandmother. It is entitled, simply

The Photograph

 

 

When you go home,

Tell them of us and say,

For their tomorrow,

We gave them our today.

John Maxwell Edmonds, 1875-1958