Today in Remembrance Sunday.My Great-Grandfather was killed in World War I. He was a stretcher-bearer, having been injured in combat earlier in the war, and died just before Armistice Day. He left a wife and four children.
The husband of one of my best friends (they are the parents of my god-son) is serving with the British Army in Afghanistan.
My middle son is attending a Remembrance Day parade today with his Beaver pack.
I find the World Wars, and the current wars, difficult to think of, difficult to comprehend. I have tears in my eyes when I read the work of war poets, when I think of my little boy trying to understand what he is supposed to be remembering, when I think of my Great-grandmother, and the countless women of her generation made widows and the young men dying abroad.
Today, on Tuesday, every year, we must, we will remember them.
3 comments:
God bless your g-grandfather and everyone else who fought for our freedoms then and now.
I found a good picture book about WWI last year. It'll be in the archives of my blog somewhere in the summer of 2007, probably, when i was figuring out what to take for our Europe trip.
For Afghanistan, we've enjoyed Deborah Ellis's Breadwinner trilogy. Your eldest might be up for that as a read-together. Gives some insight into the situation there anyway. (I've reviewed them on the blog, too.)
But, in general, I know what you mean. My grandfather fought in WWI and survived (it was before he married so lucky for me I guess). I only recently found out that he fought at Passchendaele and that remembering made him depressed. Unsurprising really.
We did go visit my great-grandfather's grave in France when I was a teenager. I don't think I appreciated it then as I would now. Perhaps I will take my children one day.
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