R J Adams -Musings And Meanderings
It was rough while it lasted, but I’m now happy to report myself on the road to recovery and raring to catch up on all the latest happenings.
Especial thanks to all of you who sent your best wishes for my recovery. They were truly appreciated. Also, a big thank you to my wife for looking after me so well and for putting up with probably the worst patient any nurse could ever have.
Thanks again.
RJ
….due to influenza.
If I survive, hospital Sparrow Chat will be back soon……(cough, splutter, sneeze!).
“The eleventh hour, of the eleventh day, of the eleventh month.”
It has a certain ring to it, an air of mystery, almost spiritual; vaguely magical. Our memories of war are like that. They bestow on it a grace war doesn’t possess; an attribute reality swiftly denies.
If, that is, we stop to think about it for too long.
Yesterday was an anniversary. It marked the end of hostilities in World War One, a war that terminated with an armistice at 11am on November 11th, 1918. The armistice was signed at 5.00am on that day, but wouldn’t take effect until 11.00am. In those six brief hours, and despite everyone knowing what time the war would end, 10,900 allied soldiers were killed, wounded, or went missing.
“We remember those who gave their lives in the service of their country.”
Those words are spoken around the western world at commemorations on November 11th each year. How hollow they sound when the truth is known; when, that is, we stop to think about it for too long.
They never “gave” their lives. Ten million men had their lives forcibly taken away (over 20 million died in total) in the, so called, “Great War” of 1914-1918, and over nothing more than a political power struggle.
Those who yesterday displayed the most grief (in Britain they are those with the finest display of lapel poppies), who shuffle to the Cenotaphs and memorial stones with their synthetic wreaths and black mourning suits, are the political ancestors of the slaughterers – the politicians who, as always, got it wrong.
None of them died in the Great War of 1914-18.
They all died in their beds, with their wives or mistresses beside them, in their fancy bedrooms in their grandiose houses, with their female servants and their black market caviar.
None of them died of cold, or hunger, or bad meat, or shot at dawn by their own side because their minds and bodies had taken just that bit too much stress, and anguish, and fear.
“They gave up their lives for their country.”
“Giving” is a choice. These men had no choice. They were rounded up, shipped to France, and slaughtered en masse through the ineptitude of their own crackpot generals and power-crazy politicians.
It is right that we should remember them. It does their memory a disservice when what we remember about them is a lie.
“The eleventh hour, of the eleventh day, of the eleventh month.”
It has a certain ring to it.
Unfortunately, the bell that tolls harbors a fatal crack.
Filed under: Political incorrectness