Remember?

Date: 06 August 2009 19:33:14

Having watched the BBC2 programmes to celerbrate the lives of the last veterans of the first world war. This set me thinking about why it is important to remember what they went through. Those who went through the ordeal of the trenches wanted to forget, forget the real nightmare, which we often just view as history.
How do we ensure that the nightmare is remembered, but remembered in a way that makes a postive contribution to the future. The First World War was called the Great War, or "the war to end all wars", yet just over 20 years later, we see the world again plunged into a world war.
We see this again in Afganistan, a country where different world powers have tried with varing degrees of sucess to impose what they think is right for the county.
We can look back post World War Two, and say that it was right to fight Hitler, but in the late 1930's would we have said the same? How do we know when it is right to campagin, when it is right to boycott, when it is right to ignore, and when it is right to fight?
When out and about i often notice war memorials, and like to stop and pause and think of those who were prepared to die for me, whatever i think of the rights and wrongs of any conflict, i remeber those who died, who were prepared to die, in order that i could enjoy freedom.