In World War One
- Forty two million people were mobilised for the Allies
- There were twenty two million casualties on the Allied side.
- There are less than ten people alive left who fought.
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.In World War Two
- Over 10% of the 1939 population of Germany were killed. 16% of Poland.
- The soviet union suffered 10,700,000 military deaths.
- The UK lost 382,600.
- One of these was John Brunt
The point of Remembrance day is not war. It’s not really peace, either, and anyone using it to push any political agenda is doing the Service a disservice. It’s the unspoken social contract between those who go to fight the powers that would attack our country and those who survive: That if you go and fight, and do not return, we will remember them.
You may disagree with the current war, where the direct threat to our lands is diffuse and not really counterable – and possibly enhanced – by direct action in the lands of others, but this war is not all wars, and these reasons are not all reasons, and those that die of these decisions did not make them.
And so we remember them.