Remembrance …

You know, this time of year’s always sad …

Or — for me — generically sad, anyway.

If that makes sense?

I hope so …

But Remembrance Sunday only happens once a year; giving us a chance to remember those who’ve lost their lives in the various conflicts — some long since finished, other’s still on-going — that Britain’s been involved with, over its history.

There’s so much I could be saying, here, isn’t there?

Ton’s of stuff!

I could get poetical, here, except I think Andrea would possibly raise an eyebrow.

I could so easily get as political …

Oh, so easily tell you what I think of the situation in Afghanistan!

I do know that many are getting ticked off by the war in Afghanistan.

Possibly with me, included …

I know, when that all started, I, like many, wasn’t stunned by the Afghan war, but we could at least say we had some sort of justification for being, after the terrible events of 9/11*.

But as it’s dragged on?

Well, from what a poll, today, has shown, people aren’t convinced we should still be there.

I’m also personally convinced that Gordon Brown’s argument that, by having troops there, we’re helping prevent terrorism here, isn’t a good one; if I’ve understood things correctly, the 7/7 bombers cited the Iraq war as a major motivating force.

Don’t get me wrong, I think our troops are doing as well as they can, with the resources they’ve got, but I think we’re fighting someone else’s war.

Not ours.

But I do know that simple fact that both Harry Patch and Henry Allingham — two of the last British survivors of World War 1 — spoke out against war in general, should be telling us something.

I could be saying all of that.

Couldn’t I?

So, with that in mind, I’ll close this, not with the usual In Flanders Field …

But with something else …

Wilfred Owen

Dulce Et Decorum Est

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,

Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,

Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs

And towards our distant rest began to trudge.

Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots

But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;

Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots

Of disappointed shells that dropped behind.

GAS! Gas! Quick, boys!— An ecstasy of fumbling,

Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;

But someone still was yelling out and stumbling

And floundering like a man in fire or lime.--

Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light

As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,

He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace

Behind the wagon that we flung him in,

And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,

His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;

If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood

Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,

Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud

Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest

To children ardent for some desperate glory,

The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est

Pro patria mori.

* I always look at World War Two and the First Gulf War, to some extent, in much the same sort of way; we could point at the Nazi régime and Saddam Hussein Al-Tikriti’s Baa’thist regime, and feel some sense of moral justification in fighting evil and aggressive régime that had invaded smaller countries, and was looking to expand.