Posted at 11am: 11th November 2014: 100 years after the end of World War One

11 hour of the 11th day of the 11th month. we will remember them.

On the eleventh hour of the eleventh day, of the eleventh month we will remember them. It is a saying that has resounded deeply within me for all of my life, and it is a good thing, because that one simple line carries the hopes and dreams of every man, woman, and child that lost their lives as part of one of the many conflicts that has scarred the life of mankind.

Today once again we mark the moment of the ending of World War One, later named the “Great War” and we stand together in silence as we remember that horrendous event that took the lives of so many of our young, and we remember them, and every life lost in conflicts around the globe since.

Think about that… Every life lost around the globe in conflicts since

Today it is 2014, exactly 100 years since the first world war. A war that witnessed the scenes of carnage and slaughter on a scale unprecedented in the modern era. Whole towns of our youngest stood together terrified and in many cases unable to talk or move, as they waited for the whistles that would take them over the walls of the trenches into a landscape of terror and carnage no one person should ever have to witness, to be cut down and trampled into the mud within the first one hundred yards of their defensive line.

They died for us… yes you sat reading this on your computer, phone or tablet. They believed in honour, they understood respect, and more than anything else, they alone made a choice based on their belief that we all should be given the right to be free. I often wonder as they felt the cold grip of death touch them, if they felt that the sacrifice they made felt like it was worth it?

Do you think as they lay there covered in blood dying in the mud, as the world around them screamed with the fear and the explosions of that moment of horror, they were comforted to know that the world that came after would be a better place, where man had learned enough to ensure something so terrible would never happen again?

I have taken part in many remembrance events in my life; I stood silently watching the faces of those old soldiers who carry that same haunted expression as the bugle sounds. I have witnessed the tears, as the memory of those times returns, and those individual moments of lost friends and heartbreak return again to the minds of those men who came back from war, forever changed, after seeing the horrors of combat. Ask any of them stood there proud that they played a part in something which was supposed to build a better world, if they want more conflicts in the world, I have, and I have never met any that want another world war, or war of any kind, what they want is for their sacrifice to have meant something.

The fact that there was a second world war, a Korean war, a Vietnam, or any of the many that has followed must feel like the biggest smack in the face to them, because they all agree on one single thing, they wanted their war to be the last.

I have never met a single parent who wants their children to die, and yet today we are still sending our young sons to face an enemy chosen by our governments, I cannot help but feel we have learned nothing in 100 years. We gather once a year and tell our young to wear the poppy of pride, and shed a tear for those who have fallen, and yet the list of those who die for us grows ever longer, it feels insulting to those who gave up everything, and has started to feel more like a pageant, than what it should be, a true and honest mark of respect, for the sacrifice those brave young men have made for our sakes. It should stand for more than just the assembly of officials with their political motivations, who gather around a stone monument and lay a wreath before it, in a routine show of mock gratitude, because until our leaders chose to walk the path of peace, their actions are false, and I feel strongly they disgrace the sacrifice made by those brave few.

We have learned nothing… our leaders have chosen ambition and capital gains above everything, and our freedoms as people have been slowly subverted. We do not live in a changed world, we are still surrounded by conflict, and where we do not fight, we sell our arms to the highest bidder. We arm factions and call them friends, who later become our enemies, and then we arm another faction to kill them and call them friend, only to once again label them enemy at a later date. We praise the capital we raise and spend yet more to create more aggressive weapons, and all the while those who died to create a better world lie silently sleeping unaware that to the leaders of this world, their sacrifice taught them nothing… its disgraceful and disrespectful.

In the UK today we have a government with debuts, who blame the benefit culture of the previous government for the woes of this land. We sneer at those who live on handouts from the state, yet no one mentions the debts we have piled up to create more weapons and troops to fight in Iraq or Afghanistan, wars that costs us millions every hour and have done so for the last decade. There is no coincidence that the rich sit quietly enjoying the profits of a campaign that brings in oil revenues and fat cheques from trade in those lands. We blame the poor, we let them suffer, and poverty is a crime in the UK.

We must honour the fallen; reintroduce the concept of respect, for it has dwindled greatly since 1914. If we cannot learn from them, we are doomed to a world of yet more pain and suffering, where parents bury their young, and are marked by grief for the rest of their lives. Those who survived are less in number every year, and soon there will be a time where we no longer have them amongst us, and so we should act now and tell those in charge that enough is enough, take the money of war and build a better land, where those fallen hero’s see the dreams and hopes they carried with their rifles into war are cherished and brought to fruition.

They came from a time where life had value, we need to turn back the clock and remember theirs, and hand back the value it held for them, for they gave it freely and it meant something.

And with the going down of the sun, we must remember them.

The Cemetery of the lost in France.