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11/11

Armistice day is the right occasion to pause and reflect on sacrifices made by others which have enabled us to sample many of the freedoms we enjoy today.

It was studying Wilfred Owen poetry in school that captured my interest so painstakingly to World War I in particular. Amidst the black and white grainy photographs in history text books, it was difficult to truely relate to the horrors of the trenches, to the terror of the gas attacks, to the squalid diseased conditions and war of attrition that so many thousands of men faced daily. But the poems got you. The poems were sheer evocative gut-wrenching reality.

Pictures paint a thousand words. But the poems painted a thousand pictures.

At a time where we have media obsessed with celebrities, bombarding us with images and portrayals of a lifestyle which we begin to think we want; it is easy to be fooled. It is easy to forget the truth. We forget what has gone before us, we forget that life is about people and having good people in your life.

DULCE ET DECORUM EST

And lest we forget.

Comments

John Greenaway said…
And Hedd Wyn of course. Only read in translation though...

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