Remembrance

Tomorrow, in case you haven’t been made aware of it, is the 70th anniversary of the D-Day landings in Normandy, and of the dreadful carnage that eventually led to the downfall of Hitler. Few veterans survive, but some will be there, at least.

Normally I don’t like to give much space to discussions of war. Yet this is one occasion I must say a word or two, since my own father was injured in WW2 and my father-in-law landed on D-Day and lasted six weeks before he was wounded. All my English relatives suffered from the terrifying effects of German bombings, and an uncle I never met was killed at Arnhem. Both my wife and I grew up in the shadow of traumas carried by our fathers, who felt they had to do what they did – and who so nearly paid the ultimate price. We have been marked by their sadness and trauma, too.

I have complete gratitude for their bravery, sacrifice, and sense of what is right. War may be ghastly and wrong, but leaving a Hitler loose in the world, unchecked, is unthinkable.

War takes several generations to be cleared from any society. We’re not free of it yet because we keep engaging in them. The victims are not just the combatants. That’s worth remembering, too.