Word of the day

Valorous – showing great courage in the face of danger, especially in battle; to show valour: to be brave; to be valiant and courageous.

Night After Night

The book Night After Night tells the story of New Zealanders in Bomber Command in World War II.

Night after night also applies to the people of Ypres in Belgium.

Night after night, almost uninterrupted every night since 1928, even during German occupation in World War II, they observe a Last Post ceremony at the Menin Gate Memorial in gratitude for the Commonwealth soldiers who died in the surrounding countryside during World War I.

We were among about 1000 people from many different countries who stood in silence as the Last Post was played, and then as a bonus, a piper played the lament.

I thanked one of the men and told him it is an incredible tribute they are paying, night after night.

He replied, what they are doing is nothing compared to what the men they were remembering did.

“Known unto God”

Visiting war graves in France and Belgium is moving and sobering.

They are immaculately kept, thanks to the work of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission.

They are peaceful, in stark contrast to the noise and brutality that those buried there endured.

They are a tragic reminder to the tragedy of war and what so many sacrificed in the fight for freedom.

So many of the men who are buried there were so young – in their teens and early 20s.

Private V.J. Cameron of the Otago Regiment is one of them buried in the Caterpillar Valley Cemetery.

In World War I, soldiers didn’t have dog tags and many bodies were unable to be identified. Tomb stones for them have the inscription Known unto God.

Tyne Cot Cemetery:

It’s not forgetting, it’s not learning

Thousands of allied soldiers are buried in Tyne Cot Cemetery in Belgium.

It was visited by King George V in 1922, who said:

We can truly say that the whole Circuit of the earth is girded with the graves of our dead. In the course of my pilgrimage I have many times asked myself whether there can be more potent advocates of peace upon earth through the years to come than this massed multitude of silent witnesses to the desolation of war.

One exhortation on Anzac Day is lest we forget.

The problem isn’t that we forget, it’s not learning in spite of  all the witnesses, silent or not, to the desolation of war.