Remembrance Day

I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.
 Dwight D. Eisenhower

                                                  

It is Remembrance Day here in the UK and Veteran's Day back home.  The eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month......marking the end of the First World War...and this year there is an extra eleven as we are in the year 2011.

While poppies are sometimes sold in the US, here in the UK almost everyone has been wearing a poppy for the past month. On Friday all of the students at Bliss Charity wore red clothes instead of their regular uniforms to observe the day.  And we had a school-wide assembly and participated in a national two-minute silence at 11:00am. During the assembly the headteacher played a video that contained the lyrics to a song that my son Ian had me listen to years ago.  Here's the version by Boston's Dropkick Murphys that Ian shared with me......it makes me cry every time.....



Most towns and villages here have a monument to the sons and daughters who served in the British Armed Forces.  Many of these stone crosses were begun as WWI monuments and have sadly needed to serve continuous duty to include the names of those from other wars.

The Nether Heyford war memorial sits right outside our house.  On Sunday a parade of villagers started at Bliss Charity school, marched up to the church for a remembrance service and then back down to the memorial for a wreath laying ceremony.  It seemed as though the whole village had turned out to participate in this tradition of acknowledgement and respect.

The Nana made poppies to decorate our windows.  They looked great and it was a nice touch since our house was right at the memorial.

In 1950 my dad, Neal Bertolone, dropped out of high school and joined the army.  Months later he found himself in Korea.  His Army unit of 125 young men were some of the first soldiers to arrive.  When this "police action" ended in 1953 only five of them returned home.  And the 38th Parallel was the same as it was in 1949.

My dad never spoke of his experiences in Korea.  And the questions that I have now are 23 years too late.  So today I remember my dad and all the other soldiers whose lives are forever effected by stories they would rather forget.

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.
Dwight D. Eisenhower