A Rememberance for Rememberance Day 2025

 "Nevermore shall I see the Sun, for I fell to a German's gun. "  -- Joseph Kilna Mackenzie, "Sgt Mackenzie." (2000.) 

(it was a lament written to honor his great-grandfather, who was killed in WW1.)

On the Eleventh Hour of the Eleventh Day of the Eleventh Month of 1918 all fighting on the European Western Front ceased, bringing a final halt to a war which had been fought on battlefields around the world since 1914. 

 

Trench Warfare, circa 1917

 

 

        Places like Gallipoli, 

Ypres, Marne, Somme. Palestine, Mesopotamia, and many others saw brutal fighting. The 19th century battle of trench vs fortress met up with modern recuperating artillery pieces and machine-guns, flame throwers and chemical warfare, and the result was horrific. hundreds of thousands died in days. So many dead that they couldn't be dealt with properly. Sometimes they would bury the dead and a month later a new trench would unearth them. It was horror on a grand scale, and it should have taught us never to raise armies again, but it did not. The War to End All Wars didn't. For one reason, the issues that gave rise to the war weren't settled by it. Next, the victors (the Grand Alliance of USA, UK, France, Italy, Japan and Russia) imposed huge reparations on the losing side -- Germany. (originally Austria-Hungary, but that composite nation was destroyed by the war.) Perhaps there was also a deeper reason : Perhaps humanity is too prone to violence to go long without it. Perhaps we are still atavistic enough to fall back on our collective roots and take to bashing each other with rocks, sticks, rotten fruit and chunks of feces. I will leave that question to the Anthropologists and Philosophers. I hope, if we cannot stop practicing warfare on each other that we can at least all agree that war should never be the first choice. War should be the last option. Oppenheimer hoped that his deadly toy would at last force mankind to stop fighting, that his invention would make warfare so horrible that no one would fight one. Someone should have told him that Maxim and Gatling before him had expressed the same views. No, there simply aren't any weapon so terrible we won't use it. We're just that bloodyminded. 

I leave off with a final thought. 

 Remember the dead who lie in Flanders Fields. But do not seek to avenge them. They will sleep now, and those whom we unnecessarily send to join them would rather we stopped and talked. 

Peace, Friends. Remember the dead. remember the maimed. remember the Veterans. These last need our help, our thanks and our acceptance. We need their forgiveness.