Lest We Forget

It's Remembrance Day here in Canada and elsewhere in the Commonwealth (and Veterans' Day in the US). We're wearing our poppies, and we paused for a moment of silence at 11 am. Sadly, with a toddler and a newborn, a visit to the Canadian War Memorial for the service was not feasible so we watched on TV. We're close enough, though, that the fighter planes which scramble for the fly-over could be heard from our house.

Teddy was not at all interested in the ceremony -- even the marching soldiers -- until the very end of the procession when he spotted the military vehicles. 'A TRUCK!" he exclaimed. "A truck, a car, a bup (bus)!!"

There is not one single Canadian WWI veteran still alive, and the youngest possible WWII veteran (18 in 1945) would now be 83. But the sacrifices that they made when they were little more than children will never be forgotten.

I look forward to taking the kids to battlefields one day (visiting Ypres was a harrowing and valuable moment for me) and to attending the 2018 ceremony in person to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the armistice.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:

Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.

At the going down of the sun and in the morning,

We will remember them.

"Ode of Remembrance", taken from "For the Fallen" by Lawrence Binyon.