Lest We Forget

I grew up in a small County Durham mining town. My father, who was a miner all of his working life and a devout Trade Unionist, was a man of vision and knew the pits had had their day(just not quite as soon as they did). So in the same year that Margaret Thatcher took power of this once great country, already organising her generals to wage war on the National Trade Unions and the working classes, I joined the Royal Navy as a young innocent teenager with the World as his playground, ready to sail the seven seas in search of love, life and Adventure... and I found all three in abundance..... but those stories are for after the watershed....

Then, just a few short years later the unthinkable happened, due to Thatcher's political  and personal stubbornness, the Country sailed for war, toward a desolate group of islands on the other side of the World. WHY? was not a question that we asked, it didn't even cross our minds. Our family, my shipmates were sailing to war and we would be there to cover each others backs, just as we always were, that's the way it was in all aspects of life in the Armed Forces. We were blood brothers..... Brothers in Arms.....a bond so strong
that even now when we meet, over thirty years later, we carry on our conversation and friendship as if the last thirty years just hadn't happened, that kind of bond is something that anyone who has never served in the Armed Forces could not even begin to comprehend. This bond stretched from ship to ship, even nation to nation in a strange way for when the heat of the battle is over and an enemy ship is sunk, sailors do not cheer or dance in celebration as they do in Hollywood movies. They search, in silence for survivors while in their mind they whisper the phrase "There but for the grace of God go I".....  and they mourn the death of every fellow mariner pulled cold and bloated from the sea, for they are no longer the enemy.

Modern Naval battles are a war of anonymity, you no longer get close enough to see the whites of your enemies eyes, you don't even get close enough to see the enemy ships but this makes it no less personal than if you were coming along side an enemy galleon to deliver a broadside and swing, cutlass in hand to cut down the enemy on his own deck... . War has even changed beyond recognition from Winston Churchill's day when 'So Many Owed So Much to So Few'....... Half a generation of adventure seeking teenagers.... lost, for they were only teenagers, 'The Few' when they piloted planes less technologically advanced than a present day commuter's mp3 player... They were teenagers who poured out of cramped landing craft and raced over blood drenched sand to liberate Normandy..... They were teenagers who ran the daily gauntlet of unseen German U-boats to deliver urgently needed supplies to the British public. Half a generation paid the ultimate price, the remainder die slowly of cold in a country where veterans can't afford to heat their homes because of corporate greed.

In an ideal world, the veterans who freely gave up their youth and offered their lives for our freedom and probably still, to this day suffer the nightmares of a war long forgotten, should be showered in offerings of thanks. They should not have to go hungry so that they can afford to switch on the heating when the bite of winter snaps at their feet. They should be living a life befitting a hero... a hero that the whole nation, no, the whole world is indebted to.

Our society can afford mediocre middle managers by the bucket load, to ease the workload of our overpaid, under worked senior directors. We can afford millions to pay narcissistic Prima Donna football players and egotistical actors pretending to be war heroes whilst forgotten real life war heroes go hungry and cold in their twilight years...  So if you really are thankful for the sacrifice made by these brave men and women who gave so much, then go to your local Cenotaph tomorrow and show that thanks by respecting the two minutes silence during the Ceremony of Remembrance and by applauding those survivors who are still able to march proudly in rank and file.

 “When You Go Home, Tell Them Of Us And Say, For Their Tomorrow, We Gave Our Today.”

 Lest we forget…