Some thoughts on Remembrance Sunday:

[lizziec]

As you should all know by now from my whining I'm at Telehouse this weekend and I went to a slightly quieter part with Ben to observe the two minutes silence. It happened to be next to a window and as I looked out over Docklands and towards central London and the Gherkin I kept thinking as I watched the cars still moving and the landscape that someone who was alive for the first two minutes silence in 1919 wouldn't recognise it today. It all looks like we've come so far but we haven't. People are still at war and killing one another today, and all the technology has served to do is make us more efficient at doing so. It happens elsewhere so we rarely see it, but it's still happening.

Also: I don't think a man as full of hate as Ian Paisly should be allowed to lay a wreath at the Cenotaph. It's just not right.

Comments

[barakta]

Shame about the "alway's" in the animated gif there...

This is the first year my grandfather (the one who died) will be at peace about the war. He hated 11/11 because all it did was bring it all back, what he lived through for 66 years of his life. He was also angry that we haven't learned lessons and continue to make the same mistakes and sacrifice people's lives to unworthy causes in wars fought for less than noble reasons. I hope he is at peace, he deserves that, he didn't have a lot of that in his life.

[trappermcintyre.livejournal.com]

Didn't notice that. Stupid official gif...

I'm glad he's at peace this year. Sounds like 11/11 was really traumatic for him :(

[barakta]

Well 11/11, gulf war *2, Falklands, and whatever else was fighty type stuff. He probably had PTSD as he did have flashbacks and towards the end of his life even began to talk about the war, as if he hadn't remembered never doing so before. My mum says her dad didn't discuss the war EVER when they were small, so to hear him talking about some of it when she was 50 or so was weird to say the least. I don't think he stayed in touch with his warbuddies as they were either all killed or people he didn't get on with...