Remember.

Went for a walk around the remembrance garden by the Scott monument on the way to Rachel's for lunch. One side is all the little wooden crosses with poppies and people's names on them, and it's quite staggering and quite poignant seeing them laid out like that. The other side is a garden for those who have lost their lives since 1945, it's so lovingly laid out, with all those names that mean nothing to me but everything to someone else.

I've always had a strong respect for and awareness of remembrance day (which also happens to be my birthday) maybe because of my families military interest and history, I don't know, but I know without all those men and women who served, and those who gave their lives, we wouldn't have the freedom we have today.

That beautiful last verse from Binyon's 'For the Fallen' is always quoted around remembrance day, and so it should. But I remember a poem we studied in English Literature at college, Oswestry's own, Wilfred Owen's 'Dulce et Decorum Est'.

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame, all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!--An ecstasy of fumbling
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime.--
Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams before my helpless sight
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin,
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs
Bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,--
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

It's so horrific, but still we can't even begin to imagine just how awful it really was, or the things that those people saw. It is a really stark reminder how blessed we are, and that so many died in terrible, undignified ways, and those who have mental scars that can never healed, the least we can do is remember them, and be truly grateful for what they did.