Why We Remember
It is eighty nine years since ‘the war to end all wars’ concluded with the disastrous peace settlement at Versailles. Only twenty years later, Europe was once again plunged back into a bloody conflict that eventually engulfed the world.
Watching the Remembrance Day memorial service in London this morning was like briefly glimpsing through a narrow window into the past. Solemn figures lined Whitehall around the Cenotaph as they have done every year for nearly a century; among them suited politicians, foreign diplomats, war veterans, monarchy (a seemingly declining phenomenon in modernity) and a sea of sombre faces reflecting upon past glories long since faded and the death of millions whose blood was poured down shell-holes till their veins ran dry.
While ever greater emphasis has been placed upon the catastrophic death toll and the brutality of past wars, of most significance was not necessarily the manner in which so many lives were lost; by bullet or incendiary bomb from on high, or by whizzing, pounding shells or the stuttering half-hearted clacker of the machine-gun that ripped flesh from limb and rendered life inanimate - but quite why so many people died on the battlefield, and for what cause.
It was for the most just and noble of reasons that millions gave their lives in the service of their country; in the pursuit of freedom from tyranny. Willingly or unwillingly it matters not, for they are heroes one and all – and their sacrifice will stand as stark testament to future generations of the price men paid for liberty.
With every passing moment the Great War quietly fades out of living memory, leaving ours and future generations, conditioned as we have and will be by the poetry of war, to contemplate the fact that all but a small, select few have never experienced the conflict we seek to honour year by year - that we should be so fortunate.
Yet, while we may not all be soldiers fighting for a distant cause in foreign fields of foreign lands, we are all custodians of the hard-won rights and freedoms of those who came before us, who believed these to be prizes worth fighting and dying for, whatever the cost may be, and for which we owe an unrepayable debt of gratitude.
And, as the Last Post sounds and the twilight shadows lengthen over war memorials across the land, those of us left behind can reflect upon the fact that although twentieth century Europe left us with a legacy of death and destruction whose memory and affects will be long lasting, it was ultimately because the freedoms we cherish were as important then as they are today, and always shall be.
That is why we remember, and that is why we must never forget.
