Remembrance

Lest we forget
But tell me, what exactly are we meant to remember?
The tragic loss of a generation on the fields of war?
The missed potential of their collective ingenuity?
The mental and physical mutilation of those lucky enough to ‘survive’?
Their quiet hours of anguish and PTSD
Undiagnosed and untreated
Suffered with a stoic ‘Chin up, soldier on’?
All the kids who grew up never knowing their dads and uncles?
All the cousins that never were?

Or are there other things on this agenda of memory?

The stupidity of the military hierarchy
For waging an industrial war with pre-industrial strategies?
Ordering troops to charge against machine guns
As though dodging the odd ill-aimed shot?
Sitting back and reissuing the same orders
Even when it was bleedingly obvious they weren’t working?

Or the abomination of the armistice?
A peace deal that heralded a revolution
The Great Depression
And an even bloodier conflagration twenty years later?
Smart way to end the war to end all wars.

Or perhaps we’re meant to remember the reason it started
The crazy confluence of treaties that meant
The farcical assassination of a minor monarch in a stupid helmet
Fractured irrevocably the ‘civilized’ world?

And defending what?
A bunch of tired old colonial empires
Those bastions of oppression that benefitted only
The over-privileged?

Or perhaps we’re meant to remember
The commemorations themselves?
Especially this centenary
The expense of it and all those pompous politicians
With their solemn speeches about the birth of a nation
Selfless sacrifice
Human tragedy
La-la la-la
But who were really just using it as a yet another way to feed
The twenty-four-hour news cycle
A photo opportunity to ram their faces down our eyes again
In the hope that we might think better of them
Vote them back in?

There’s a lot to remember
But apart from the poor soldiers and their families
Little of it noble

 

© Ian Lilburne 2018