Lest we forget

This day this hour, the 11th hour of the 11th day I hope you are all taking time off from your morning coffee to stand and remember. Lest we forget !!

It is a crisp bright day in the streets of London as this annual event takes place with all the solemnity the occasion demands. The massed bands play their solemn and moving music, the gay coated men at arms are a reminder of a subsection of society that offers its self in conflicts, around the globe, arguably, to keep us safe.

It used to be called Armistice Day which reflected the moment when the Armistice was signed to end World War 1. Notice it was an armistice not a defeat. The nations at war were exhausted and the German nation was still theoretically undefeated and would have meant the expenditure of many more lives to defeat Germany properly.
Armistice Day merged into Remembrance Day to encompass the Second World War and now, other wars, up to the current conflict in Afghanistan.   

The toll on the people who fought is remembered by the men and women who march past with their wreaths of poppy's to be laid on the steps of the Cenotaph. The ribboned, largely older men, some very old men who all have tales to tell that would amaze the politically correct, safety absorbed people who seem now to direct events on our shores. Will we be fit for duty, with the corrosive influence of the nanny state, if and when we are asked to make the ultimate sacrifice in the future ?
These men marching past come from a cultural mindset that is getting rarer, a mindset that encompasses their place and their responsibility towards society so distant from the self absorbed templet that Mrs Thatcher trumpeted and which, with the self centred consumerist society we have, has demolished much of what we stood for.

The men are largely drawn from the working class with its self confident, chipper approach to life and the tasks asked of them. The structures in society were entrenched and largely accepted. These men conscripted into the forces were mainly compliant, believing what they were told by their "betters" and willing to do their best !!!

As the wreaths are laid it is always impressive to see the scope and breadth of the, what was the Empire, now the Commonwealth, represented by different country's, stretching around the globe. The size of the enlistment and the courageous feat's performed by men whose fight this was, in a sense, not theirs, is amazing.
The Mother Country needed them and they responded !!