For many Broadcasting Brain readers today is called Veterans Day. Here in Canada we call it Remembrance Day. This holiday marks the date (Nov. 11, 1918) that World War I hostilities ceased, bringing an end to that war at 11 AM (UK time) that day.
I’m pretty fortunate: I’ve never been a part of a war, nor have any of my family members.
Nonetheless, there are wars going on in the world as I write this post. In some ways the current conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq are smaller in scale, but they are still brutal and they still disrupt lives and countries. It’s easy to pick on the soldiers, as happened following the Vietnam war, but soldiers do a job so that most of us don’t have to do that sort of thing. Are they superhuman, sainted, or otherwise superior to the rest of us? No, but they often do ugly work that many people could not do.
As for the generals, the leaders, and the commanders-in-chief, no one knows all of the reasons why they send soldiers to be wounded or killed in battle, but it becomes harder and harder to understand and accept these decisions. Yet still we must remember and, if not celebrate, at least honor the sacrifices that soldiers have made.
The poppy is the most visible symbol of Remembrance Day in several British Commonwealth countries, including Canada. The origin of the poppy is as follows, from Wikipedia.org:
The poppy’s significance to Remembrance Day is a result of Canadian military physician John McCrae’s poem In Flanders Fields. The poppy emblem was chosen because of the poppies that bloomed across some of the worst battlefields of Flanders in World War I, their red colour an appropriate symbol for the bloodshed of trench warfare.
I suppose there’s some irony in beautiful red flowers blooming over battlefields.
I’ve actually visited one of those battlefields: Vimy Ridge, near the French town of Arras. Vimy Ridge was given to the Canadian government by the French government in 1922 in recognition of the Canadian soldiers who fought against the German forces during World War I. The Canadian National Vimy Memorial was constructed at the site and it’s a pretty amazing thing to see:
I’ve visited Vimy Ridge on two separate occasions in 1998 and it’s both awe-inspiring and eerie. During the site tour you can see where the Canadian soldiers had their base: in a bunch of tunnels in nearby hills. They spent the better part of a year in squalid conditions preparing to retake the hill from the Germans, working in secret.
I can’t imagine what it was like to live and work in those conditions.
Today’s soldiers probably have an easier time of it in general, but I’m sure it’s still no picnic, as they say.
This isn’t a typical post for this blog, but I think that it’s important, from time to time, to use these social media tools to educate and inform other people about both good and bad things in this world.
Regardless of how you feel about war, you’ve got to acknowledge the fact that soliders, like policemen, firemen, sanitation workers, construction workers, relief workers, health care professionals, etc. have hard and difficult jobs to do, but they do them in the service of greater ideals and loyalty to their country.
Perhaps these social media tools that we sometimes take for granted wouldn’t be at our disposal without the sacrifices of hard working men and women who served as soldiers.
To all soldiers who have worked and sacrificed to protect their countries during times of war, thank you.
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