In Remembrance

On this day of Remembrance, I am mindful of what my father and his brothers went through over eighty years ago. At the age of twenty, my father was posted to the front lines and got captured. He was one of the lucky ones. Had he not been captured I simply would not have been here.

My father spent the rest of the violent conflict as a prisoner of war somewhere in Poland. When he returned, in 1945, nothing more than skin and bone, it was a surprise to his mother as she had been previously informed that he was lost in action, in other words dead. For the state of his mind, he might as well have been. He never once spoke of the war, preferring to try to not even think about it. Sadly, he passed away long before his time, no doubt due to what he had experienced in WWII. I must also pay my respects to my father’s younger brother who died in Korea in 1953 serving another senseless war.

What horrors my father and men like him must have seen, being horrifically blown to pieces somewhere far from home and their loved ones. None of us can imagine how that must have been. They say it doesn’t bear thinking about, and yet I think at times like this we should. And we should think about the reason why that conflict came about as well.

It was all to defeat an evil fascist with a policy of expansionism, whatever the human cost. A leader who first moved to Poland before making a move to other European countries. Today, we give honour to those men and women who fought the brave fight and paid the ultimate price for our freedom from tyranny.

It would serve us well if we at least honour their sacrifice by fighting the tyranny almost upon us now.