Remembrance

Funny how we treat remembrance.
It has become popular once again to stand for two minutes on November the 11th at precisely eleven o' clock and consider those who fell in two world wars. A long ignored habit has returned to the nation. I wonder why? And for how long?
Yet while we watch the service at the cenotaph and note the number of ex servicemen marching past, I find myself asking, 'What about tomorrow?' Will we remember them then?

If you have a man next door who on occasion screams loudly during the night, appears depressed at times and possibly suicidal and unapproachable, and acts in a strange manner, do we care why? Or is he just a menace to us all?
Many men who served in the major wars, as well in the countless small conflicts that this country has participated in since 1945, have very good reason to act this way.
The sight of dead friends, guilt over their own merciless actions, horrors they would never want their children to know about, these things remain deep in their mind and return again and again to them, often in their dreams.
But do we care?

We remember the dead.
We wear the poppy, often with pride, we acknowledge survivors and read their memoirs, sharing, from a safe distance, their tale. We see ourselves as one with them.

But then forget them.

Who cares for those disabled in body or mind by war? The government? Hardly. After 1945 those demobbed were just told to go home and get on with their lives. Is it any different today?
It seems to me that there is far to little done for those who endured and suffer serving the nation. The nation does not grant decent 'post traumatic stress' counseling in my view. The public just don't want to know if the man next to them drinks too much and cannot control his aggression. 'Lock him up, he's a danger!' is the best they can do.

However, on this date, at the cenotaph, and countless memorials throughout the land such men are honoured.

Then forgotten.