In Memory.....

I post this tribute on he eleveth hour of the eleventh month in rememberance of all who have given their lives for the freedom we enjoy today and are still doing so at this very moment.

God bless you all, whatever your nationality.

Picture by Adie Ray

Rememberance Day is observed officially in New Zealand at the National War Memorials in Wellington and Auckland ..... but the observance of ANZAC Day is the main observance in both NZ and Australia.

The Tomb of the Unknown Warrior contains the remains of a New Zealand soldier who died on the Western Front during World War I, but whose body could not be identified. He was re-interred in his new Tomb on Armistice Day, 11 November 2004. He is a symbol of remembrance for all the New Zealanders who never made the journey home.  http://www.nationalwarmemorial.govt.nz/index.html

Te mamae nei a te pōuri nui
The great pain we feel
Tēnei ra e te tau
Is for you who were our future
Aue hoki mai ra ki te kainga tūturu
Come back return home,
E tatari atu nei ki a kou tou
We have waited for you
Ngā tau roa
Through the long years
I ngaro atu ai te aroha
You were away. Sorrow
E ngau kino nei I ahau aue taukuri e
Aches within me 

Here's to the memory of 2nd Lt. Wilfred Owen, MC, 5th Bn Manchester Regt., killed in action on Nov. 4, 1918 during the Battle of the Sambre. His poem below starkly sums up the futility of war and the sacrifice of a generation--penned by one who knew only too well the horrors of the trenches:

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 tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped 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,
Obscene as cancer, 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.

There is no glory in war. There is only the fierce individual honor of soldiers who press on despite the odds against them. I am witness to what that war did to my grandfather--it utterly shattered him and left him a bitter, empty shell of a man until the day he died 64 years after the Armistice.