Tomorrow is Remembrance Day. I’m more or less anti-war, pro-peace. But I have a ton of respect for people who serve their country and put themselves in harms way.
I’m prone to forget what Remembrance Day is all about- I don’t think I’m alone in that. But I really shouldn’t ever forget- my Mom is a World War II veteran. She served overseas as part of Canada’s armed forces. A volunteer like all women, she chose to disrupt her life, to take the risk.
Its hard for me to imagine what that must have been like. Mom grew up on a farm near a tiny town in Southern Saskatchewan. When she enlisted she ended up being trained a long way from home, then was loaded on a troop carrier (a big converted cruise ship) and was sailed across the ocean. She ended up London, a huge city under nearly daily attack at times, attacks that included weapons unheard of at the time like unmanned rockets fired from hundreds of miles away. I imagine it was exciting, and very scary at times too. People she knew in London surely must have died in bomb attacks, buildings were standing one moment and destroyed the next, rationing was in effect, and the Nazis were winning…
I’m proud of my Mom. Its amazing to think of what the world might look like today if it hadn’t been for the courage of people like her. Not all of them carried guns or flew planes, but they set aside comfort and safety to defend us. I’m going to be thinking of Mom tomorrow, and of all the men and women who didn’t come home. And of the men and women who are on today’s battlefields, putting their lives at risk for their countries…Thank you all.