to Remember...

It's Remembrance Day tomorrow, and as I covered a ceremony at the high school in town, I found myself wondering why... why the cross, why the fake wreaths (does anyone else think they are ugly?), why the anguish-filled, hopeless, angry poems read out by monotone teenagers who don't seem to understand what they're reading (that really ticked me off - if you're going to read such powerful words, say it with meaning)... one of the poems read was Owen Wilfred's "Dulce et Decorum est", about WWI. I thought it was a horrible poem to read at a Remembrance Day ceremony, because Wilfred was writing about the horrors of war and about the lie behind the sentiment that it is a great honour to die for your country. Great poem, but highly inappropriate... I thought.

As my camera clicked away, the lens fell on a Korean War veteran, hand on flag, face stoic. I found myself thinking about him and his experiences. What has he seen? What has he done? Can he talk about those memories? Do they still keep him up at night? The arm that grasps the flag now might be shaking and weak, but at one time, in his youth, that same hand was strong and purposeful, in grasping a gun...

And I thought, it is for them that we remember. We may not like the thought of war; I don't - I'm very against war... but as a student of history, I know that war is going to happen(in spite of our best efforts)... But to not support veterans is to not stand behind them in their very terrible experiences they endured. Read the war experiences of Robert Graves or Farley Mowat, or even "All Quiet on the Western Front" and you'll know what I'm talking about.

Remembrance Day also has a special meaning for my family because my great-great-grandfather hid Jews in his house and barn in rural Holland. My husband's grandfather was a member of the Dutch Resistance, telling stories of narrow escape from the Nazis. His mother was even put into a concentration camp.

We need to remember... so that their experiences, their fights, their courage... was not in vain...