Lest we forget.

One is reminded every so often, of the loss of a loved one, how the grief hits like a punch. . 
Luckily now-a-days such events are few and far between,  a far cry from 70 years ago when Europe was a cauldron of fighting and dissent.
70 years of peace has enabled the people of the continent to live and never know the trauma of war. To never know the traumatic effect of a  shortened life expectancy, of men in their hundreds of thousands, away fighting and dying in the cause to preserve democracy and avoid totalitarianism.
The scale of the losses on all fronts, particularly on the Eastern front, where over 20 million died is on a scale unimaginable in today's world.
The conflicting nations of the Europe of 1930/40s are now collaborative in every way and it would seem unimaginable for any one of them to take up arms against another. 
How we, of my generation, owe the men who took up arms to fight the battles described in the history books by their proximity to a hill or a village but inadequate in describing the fear and the heroism of the ordinary solders who actually fought the battle, who died in their thousands gaining a mile here, a hundred yards there.  
In civvy street they were unassuming people, the plumber, the labourer, the clerk, the delivery man who, in a typical, English class segregated fashion, were looked down upon by the upper middle class as inferior.  They were the Officers pawns in the game of warfare, they were the means of gaining success, of collecting the commendation, of adding a another pip !!

Now we see them only on Armistice Day, an ever decreasing band of brothers marching stiffly, not as a result of drill but of old age. We owe them so much that we take for granted.