Remembrance Day 2014

Today is 11th November 2014, an important day and an important year. It has made me reflect on time and how it changes as we get older. Growing up in the '70's, WW1 seemed an age away and I suppose it was, I was younger and the 60 odd years since the war was a long time in a  young life but looking back now, not so far in history. I grew up with the generation that fought, still alive and now we regret not having those first hand accounts. I remember, at the age of 6 or 7 we used to walk past the Captain's house, an old sailor that served in WW1, I don't know how we knew that, he never spoke of it and perhaps that is why it is not  documented more, they never volunteered their life stories and we never asked.

100 years doesn't seem very long ago but I always related to WW1 through history but the BBC have done an amazing job of bringing it to life. They made a short series, "Our World War", three episode (so far) that have made WW1 real. It has a modern soundtrack and the characters are real, not figures in history but young lads reacting the way that young lads always do. It is breathtaking, wonderful, heroic and tragic, I recommend this series to everyone, even my youngest daughter watched an episode and the more outrageous it got, the more we watched until the end when it told us that these were true stories, the bravery and carnage wasn't fictional, it was an account of events that happened.

It is always difficult to find more to say on an event that happens every year, it is always poignant, it always gives pause for thought and reflection but this year is special of course, 100 years is a milestone and it puts WW1 into perspective historically, the first of the modern wars, the first war that used aircraft, tanks and more efficient methods of mass killing. It was the first mechanized war.
I have been wondering what happened after the war, what was the feeling in the UK and the Commonwealth? Was it celebratory or sadness? The lead up to the war had a World in relative peace, economies were strong and life appears to have been lived without too many worries, certainly no one saw the coming doom.

It is worth noting that this will be the strangest of Remembrance days, we celebrate the end of WW1 at the beginning, in this the centenary of the start of the war, we still have 4 years of war to go.

Anyway, on this most special of days, here is my commemoration to WW1. I bought this poppy at Paschendaele in Belgium and on Sunday, as the sun set, I put it to the sky: