Ok, going back to what I originally said … The world as we knew in our younger times has changed, thankfully for the better, because my generation took no part in the ‘great wars’. My family has talked about what happened, about loved ones that were lost.
Why then hand these things down to a generation that should be looking towards the future ?
If we continue with these ‘ceromonies’ when will it ever end ? Yes it’s important that we don’t make the same mistakes. However, cheap travel, internet and instant news has broadened the horizons and I don’t feel that we should burden our future generations with the mistakes/events of the past.
So, when will it ever end ? Look at these conflicts that we never learned from…We are in a new Millenium so why must we keep ‘harking’ back to other times, why not include these other wars that I have listed here too because they will have affected someone in my our your families, but in the past !
For goodness sakes let the future generations be free from all the propoganda !
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_1800–1899strong text
I sent off for duplicates of medals lost in a fire when the father of my kids was two years old…never received them…their grandads were in the war and although all returned alive it was obvious they had memories which haunted them…My maternal grandad kept a bible with a bullethole that he was convinced had saved him from death…he died of cancer when I was seven…
I have raised my own kids to see (and to see through) all sides and as conscientious objectors…I don’t agree with war in any of it’s guises and see all wars as gangster bankster wars where they profit from all sides and all angles…war is a racket…and nothing to do with our natural state of being…
As I write the rafah crossing has been closed…and Gaza is under attack yet again…millions dieing of starvation in Yemen…
I don’t dispute the sacrifices made by those involved on the ground in any war…but I think we have all been lied to…globally…I look at war…any wars…all wars…not with nostalgia but with anger…
One of my more valued possessions and (in the next post) the date it probably saved my maternal grandfather’s life. He was so ill after being wounded he was expected to die and his mother went to visit him in the field hospital. He actually lived into his early 80s and died soon before he and my grandmother would have celebrated their Diamond Wedding. He might not be a hero to anyone else but he always was and will be to me.
“Lest we forget”.
Let’s Not Forget 
“… I think we have all been lied to…” (@Helen6)
I think so too, Helen. I know my comments sometimes raise hackles, but there is another narrative on the conduct of war, which is seldom if ever acknowledged.
My father was a skilled engineer at the onset of WW2. In his late 20s he worked in a reserved occupation at Austin Aero in Longbridge, Birmingham, making Lancaster bombers. He, and many of his workmates, and many service-men, believed that Churchill had a secret pact with Hitler to destroy the Soviet Union.
The Aero complex was huge, over several square miles, and served by a very visible road and railway system seven miles from the city centre. Although it was a highly visible target, it was never bombed by the Luftwaffe, nor the nearby densely populated neighbourhoods where my father lived, and where I grew up. My father said its protection was agreed by Churchill and Hitler, so it could stay in production to smash the Bolsheviks.
My father became a communist after the war. So did many others of his generation.
Dad was in the Home Guard and did look-out duties on the factory roof, waving as the German bombers and Stukas flew over their heads to drop bombs on Birmingham’s slums. No homes in Longbridge or local suburbs were bombed, although a German fighter crash landed on our local golf course.
There is much more that might be recounted, but the tales of derring-do and worthy sacrifice for British values are used to paint over the cracks in the facade of falsehood and deceit. And of course it still goes on. War is a very very lucrative trade, and a gift that goes on giving.
Let’s not also forget Bill that they didn’t have a choice either, they like many others in the past were conscripted. Fight or be put in prison, even be shot in the first WW or other past conflicts !
My point is just how long do we go on forcing these conflicts on to the future generations ? Lest we forget, many heard that after the 1st WW, didn’t learn much there did we !
Future conflicts will have nothing to do with all these ‘noble wars’. Nothing to do with lest we forget, more to do with propoganda.
Like a lot of you, lost a lot of my family during and after the war, can also recount tales that have been handed down.
It has to stop somewhere, for every war/conflict there is more than one side, everyone loses, no one wins!
Hatred still exists, more so, because sometimes it seems we can’t even have a debate or a difference of opinion without a lot of argy bargy !
First Ann, my Dad had a choice, He volunteered at the outbreak of WW11 and served for the 6yrs., as did many others, for a principle.
ConspirAcy Theories aside 
I agree with much of what you say, Ann. If I have any comment to make it’s that argy-bargy is one thing, the cold-blooded killer of a person who is doing the same cold-blooded job as you in a kill-or-be-killed situation, for an abstract ideology is something else.
Apart from blind rage or huge fear, humans have a powerful self-inhibition against causing the death of a fellow being. Soldiers have to be conditioned to overcome this resistance, by anaesthetising it, and by developing blind unquestioning obedience to authority, using group psychology. They are not really heros, just men behaving like Pavlov’s experimental dogs.
The effects of such conditioning has long been recognised, in devastated de-mob lives, domestic violence, alcohol and drug abuse, self-harm and suicide. As is to be expected. Fortunately for the services, most ex-soldiers are too ill and socially incapable to protest much, as the old saying goes, they “simply fade away”.
Well there were a lot who didn’t have a choice Bill !
Not forgetting also those who were ‘forced’ into service in the UK. My dear late friend was single at the time, she was sent many miles away from home to be a capstan lathe operator after training. Land Army etc; etc;!
Still no one answers just when do we stop ‘carrying’ this on to the youngsters ?
Turning ‘blind eyes’ hasn’t worked either, as we will never agree on this one, I’m out folks 
Like the wink, Bill, my frothing-mouth paranoia aka conspiracy theory makes me wonder if that cheeky wink was tipped at me 
, but I blame the goose for giving you the idea. Must be the heat, poor feathered creature 
But goose-conspiracies aside, there are many questions which require an answer, or at least an explanation. Like the questions my father and hundreds of thousands of British men asked during the war. It didn’t stop them rolling up their sleeves and getting on with things. All of us know that there are times when it makes no sense to put your head over the parapet. But that doesn’t make the facts go away, does it?
Peace, brother 
x
I am not surprised we do not know what the “hero” thought. Few people who go to war ever talk about it to those outside the armed forces.
My maternal grandfather took part in WW1. He was originally injured on the Somme and had a metal plate put in his head where there had been a shrapnel wound. He was returned to the trenches and in 1917, not sure what battle, was gassed with mustard gas and was discharged for medical reasons. He was never able to work because of the injuries he sustained and died of emphysema brought on by the gassing, in 1964, on my Mum’s 33rd birthday. He would never talk about what he saw. My Mum says the only time she ever so him get angry was when she told a silly joke about the war and he went ballistic. She never did that again.
When young I could never understand why they would have volunteered but in 1982(?) when HMS Sheffield was sunk in the Falklands, I was in a restaurant with some colleagues when the sinking was announced. If someone had walked through the door and asked for volunteers to sign up at that moment, I think I would have joined. I also think by the time I reached the door I would have changed my mind, but for that one moment I understood why they did it.
One of the things that angers me is that people say Remembrance Day is glorifying war. (Don’t start me on people who choose to wear white poppies!). Our next door neighbours here in France are German and last year when we were going to church and then to the war memorial, he said “The war is over, why can’t you just leave it!”. I explained that we gather together to remember all those who were killed in the Great Wars and other conflicts, regardless of their nationality.
My Grandad always blamed politicians for what had happened. “It was a war of their making, not the poor sods who had to fight”. He always said if he met a German soldier he’d happily have a pint with him but he never let a politician anywhere near him and my Grandma used to have kittens when it was election time and candidates started canvassing!
For me, yes, we should still commemorate the two world wars. It is a remembrance of two wars so horrific that virtually every nation of the world was involved and stands as a commemoration of how extensive wars can get if they get out of hand.
But we’re not talking about “conspiracy theories”…the banks have always laid bets on both sides of any conflict…they don’t lose…destroy a country destroy its infrastructure…go in afterwards and benefit enormously from ahem cough “rebuilding” the countries they were instrumental in destroying…,the only people who lose are those human beings sent either by choice or force to fight other human beings…
If we want to talk about “conspiracy theories” how about the possibility and plausibility of everything we thought we knew being a lie…??? Earth is throwing up her secrets at a rate of knots at the minute…at least 1000 years maybe 2000 years of what we have been told is “our history” that just don’t make any logical sense…What if civilisation as we know it or rather have been taught it is only actually less than 500 years old…maybe less than that…??? If we really want to get into a discussion about quote “conspiracy theories” unquote…then we haven’t even begun…
But back to the topic in question…then there are not many alive today…globally …whose families haven’t been affected in one way or another by war…there are times when as mothers in their own right my own daughters really question the world they have bought their children into…the only answer I have is to never lose compassion towards our fellow human beings…and to stand up for what you know is right in spite of having to follow the road less travelled…
And Hitler was a politician Dave, one whose ideals, my Dad and others, were willing to stand up and oppose, at some point, someone has to.
Or be a pacifist, roll over, welcome ‘them in’, don’t think so. 
A very believable testimony, Dave. Unwillingness to talk about war by people who took part in it is very common, and being reminded of involvement can give rise to rage, rage which has been repressed.
Soldiers who have been made - groomed and manipulated to perform acts their instinct tells them is wrong - experience emotions similar to those of sexually abused children.
People they look up to and admire in the services, their officers, NCOs and comrades, convince them that what they are doing is good, wholesome, and not wrong or damaging. They are emotionally blackmailed into doing what their instincts tell them is the opposite, and they become compliant and trusting. Yet deep down they doubt…
When it is “all over”, they experience shame, guilt and humiliation, and relive their complicity in flashbacks at the horrors they experienced, and their willingness to give in to what they knew was a kind of perversity. After all, we know that rape is not discouraged in war, where the normal rules of human decency don’t apply.
You may think this is “cod psychology” but the similarities of PTSE and the effects of sexual abuse are well recognised. The wives of ex-combattants attest to this, and to their partners’ crippling sexual handicaps on return from recent wars.
The veneer of heroism and patriotism is just a sticking plaster. Many ex-servicemen will agree with this but, they know it is a truth that dare not speak its name. Like the victims of abuse, they feel safe amongst others whose integrity and innocence has been violated, then were cast aside with a cheap bauble and a dress-up party. And like abused youngster they take on themselves the burden of guilt, guilt that there was something in themselves that made them responsible for what they did, their collusion, their eagerness to please, their need to be approved of. “Kiss me goodnight, Sergeant Major…”
And the fiction is perpetuated by the institutions of organised warfare, and those who profit from its depredations, with riches, or power, or worse.
Ann asked ‘when do we stop’, the answer is never. Wars/conflicts are part of history and sadly of the present day so we should remember and study them so that the current and future young generations can figure out how to stop them happening because we sure as hell can’t. This year marks a hundred years since the end of the ‘war to end all wars’ but we have learnt nothing and allow ourselves to be governed by warmongers.
We are reading books by Dr John Sarno who propounds that repressed rage, even though you think that you have tried to deal with it, is the cause of much pain and illness.
I agree with Tim, we should never stop acknowledging history. Perhaps in a different way, and not specifically for this war, or that war but for all conflicts. Heaven’s above, if we have an annual peach ice cream day surely we can have something for wars? And perhaps less about heros, but more about the pain that war inflicts on everyone?
My grandfather was in the the army in First World War (a doctor). He ended up as a prisoner of war in Paris as he was caught stealing a cow to get milk for injured men. He returned home safely after the war and was honoured. However only a few years after started to be subject to persecution and hatred. Subtle at first, taunts and name calling - perhaps not that different from what happens every day on city streets now? But we know where it ended up. Luckily he, my grandmother and my mother managed to escape from Berlin. The rest of my family were not so lucky. Wars are evil, and the seeds of it are ever present. We must not let them flourish.
Happy Nelson Mandela day today…