Remembrance And War.

I remember Rembrance sunday in Silverton when I was young as being usually accompanied by suitably damp and sombre weather. The act of remembrance, then as now, consisted of the church service and the parade led by the Royal British Legion at the war memorial. In those days the parase usually took place under the eagle eyes of men like former RSM, Sid Withycombe a veteran of the first world war. That of course, indicates the main difference between the acts of remembrance then and now in that many of those present would have been participants, not just in the second world war but also in the first and would be people to who the names on the war memorial would not just be names but former neighbours, friends or reletives. That is the link with the past that is now being lost now that not only the last few veterans of the great war are in extreme old age but that those who participated in the second world war are also now leaving the stage of history.

Its difficult to imagine that we, in europe at least, will ever again see wars where huge conscript armies are flung against each other with the resultant mass slaughter. Had TV and the internet existed at the time of the first world war and images been available of the mass insanity of the trench warfare of the western front there would have probably been mass uprisings against all the rulers of the combatant european nations within two years and the whole bloody business would have been brought to a premature end. Therin though lies the contradiction though, that however much we detest war and its bloody consequences, without the technologial advances created by the necessity to win wars, most of what we now regard as vital parts of modern life such as the internet and Television probably would not exist. War sadly, throught history has been ta major motor force of technologial and scientific development, no more so then over the past century and a half. Its a sad fact of life that whilst we remember those from the village who died in the wars of the past century, without the conflicts in which they gave their lives our lives today would probably be far less easy in material and medical terms then they actually are..

Todays act of rembrance will also remember the 16, 000 or so service personnel who have died in conflicts since the end of world war two. It is a mark of the changing nature of wars and the way they are conducted that no names from this period appear on our war memorial. Fewr now fight and fewr die. Most of us will only know of the conflicts in Iraq or Afghanistan from television and the newspapers rather then from personal experience or from having met participants. We can only hope that with the change of administration in Washington no new conditions will be created where new names have to be added to the war memorial in the square.