What Is Being Remembered?

Once again, Gentle Reader, we are under assault with the selective memory process also known as Remembrance Day.  The shrinking number of surviving war veterans, now almost all in their nineties, limp, stagger and totter or are pushed in wheelchairs outside for their annual vigil at the cenotaph, surrounded by their supporters, all under the auspices of gratitude for the sacrifices they made for our country's freedom.

I do not deny that they made sacrifices.  Huge sacrifices.  The survivors, now in the death zone, carry lifelong trauma for what happened to them.  To imagine sending almost an entire generation of young men and adolescent boys to get shot down and blown to bits in a foreign war.  The death, the destruction of souls, and the many ruined and broken survivors staggering back home for the victory celebrations.  Not all were disabled for life.  Many went on to be productive citizens, raised families and lived to see their children and great grandchildren.  I don't think any of them have ever completely recovered from the shadow of war. 

I generally turn off the radio on Remembrance Day.  It is the pompous and maudlin myth making that impacts me.  It is all about what they did for their country, what they suffered for their country, how they died for their country.  When I hear these things I find myself focussing more on the things that are left unsaid.

I am not going to go into the just cause of fighting the Nazis.  Something needed to be done about them and they will go down in histroy, along with Stalin's goons and Mao's henchmen, with generous camios from Pol Pot and the architects of the Rwandan genocide, as the most murderous brutes in human history.

However...

Very little seems to be said about why our old soldiers were traumatized.  Was it just living as human targets for bombs and mortar fire for six years?  Was it seeing too many of their friends and comrades being killed before their eyes?  Was it seeing the thousands and thousands of innocent civilians wounded and murdered?

And speaking of innocent civilians, what about the ones who were not the victims of Hitler, what about the children of Germans, Italians and Japanese?  What about the firebombings of Hannover and Tokyo?  The nuclear bombs that fell on Nagasaki and Hiroshima?  How many of our veterans have been impaired by trauma because of guilt for the brutalities that they also inflicted? 

I shall give you a moment, Gentle Reader, to recompose yourselves, and no, it isn't sporting to scream the word "treason" while reading this post.

Our soldiers went to war during an era when everyone thought in black and white.  There was no room for peaceful negotiation because no one believed in it.  I am not talking about appeasement but of real dialogue and authentic diplomacy.  I do not know if Hitler could have been stopped.  I do believe that he could have been prevented.

What I find unacceptable is that under any circumstances at all that any of us would still find war an acceptable alternative.  I have no answers and no solutions, and quite frankly I do not have enough knowledge or information about the War to offer any.  But I also suspect that no one really has all the information and that there have been so many distortions of our way of recording and writing history that we are not likely to ever know.

What is being remembered?

There is no way to peace...peace is the way.