Lest we forget...

Yesterday Harry Patch died. You might ask who is he? well he was the last surviving British veteran of World War 1 or the Great War is it is more commonly known. Passing away quietly at 111 years of age just a week after another Great War veteran, Henry Allingham 113, another piece of history is gone.

We can count ourselves lucky and grateful that we never had to endure what they did. Unlike the Second World War where war was expected, the Great War came as a shock to many. Most of the young men who volunteered had never experienced anything like it in their lives before. Trench warfare was one of most appalling aspects of that war. What Patch and Allingham witnessed haunted them for the rest of their lives. Patch spoke of trying to forget the horrors of witnessing his friends dying from the effects of the gas in front of his eyes and watching over 50 000 men being slaughtered like cattle in front of his eyes. For both men, Remembrance Day was something they would rather not have remembered and for all the pomp and ceremony associated it with it, there was the quiet reflection of lives so needlessly lost and sacrificed.

There is a lesson in this for all of us to remember in the midst of our self-centred, self absorbed lives. That our freedom and all its attractions come to us courtesy of men who sacrificed so much and witnessed horrors that one should never have to in order for us to have peace.

Remember!!