I don’t attend my local Remembrance Sundays but I am immensely proud that so many people in my village choose to do so. I don’t have to explain nor justify my reasons to anyone because, thanks to those who have served, we are free to choose. And my reasons are numerous, part political, part other things, mainly personal. I’ll leave it at that.
I think of those who have fallen in war, others who were injured. Everyone gave something, some gave everything.
My family was “lucky” in that none of my closest members died in conflict. My father sailed in the Merchant Navy, aged 15, sailing on a Liberty ship through the U Boats in the North Atlantic, to bring supplies to hungry Britons, my mother and her family lost three homes and all their possessions three times over as the bombs of the Luftwaffe flattered Rotterdam. They made it through the war. Others were not so lucky.
My father Anthony Johansen almost lost his life in 1940 when, as a scholarship student at Bristol Cathedral School in the Blitz, the school was bombed while the students were in class. My mother, along with her father, mother and brother, could see from one of their homes the brave Dutch marines fighting to keep the invaders at bay. Against overwhelming odds, they could never succeed. Littered across the bridges of the city were the bodies of the dead and dying. She never talked much about those times, just that the men who fought were the bravest of the brave. I never really asked her about it.
Many people who went through the wars do not want to speak about it and who can blame them? However long you live, the scenes of death and destruction will surely never be far away from the front of your thoughts. Long before we discovered PTSD, millions have had their lives blighted by what they went through and what they saw. And these were wars where much of the action was hand to hand combat, long before the days of "smart" bombs. It was first hand, it was raw; for many it still is raw.
Have we learned anything after centuries of brutal warfare? There has been no world war since 1945 but conflicts rage seemingly everywhere. In many ways, the world is more unstable today than it has been at anytime since the second world war. Millions of refugees escape terror and persecution and the world remains clueless as to what we can do. Remembrance ceremonies have a long way to run yet.
Heroes everyone, our brace armed services, all doing things I could never do. By the accident of my birth, I have avoided the terror of being bombed, unlike my relatives who preceded me. My grandfather wandering the streets as an air raid warden, making sure the lights were out, that houses had been evacuated and sent to the shelters which themselves would only protect from collateral damage but never a direct hit. Heroes and heroines too, the day to day fear that this bombing raid might be their last.
Don't we owe it to those who follow that we do a bit better to stop this all happening again? But for our forefathers and mothers, we would not be enjoying the freedom we enjoy today. We owe it, too, to those who didn't make it through conflicts. They must be cared for by all of us, not just left to charity but by a grateful society which owes them their very lives. We can and must do better.
