Remembrance Day is here, and as usual it will be filled with so much pomp and ceremony, so much false narratives, and distorted history, that the truth will lie buried with those millions of ordinary people who died in some of the most horrifying circumstances imaginable. From the Somme to Hiroshima, the deaths will never be remembered as battles for supremacy between opposing power mongers, each seeking to bolster their own particular hold on power. It will always be honoured as noble, just, and necessary, in an attempt to make war "clean", "moral" and "righteous", so that it can be used again and again, as the various power mongers defend and bolster their own particular power block for the benefit of the rich and powerful. Through the fog of lies we should be more selective in who and what we remember.
On this Remembrance day perhaps we should reflect on the words uttered by a German soldier, from the novel "All Quiet on the Western front",
“But now, for the first time, I see you are a man like me. I thought of your hand-grenades, of your bayonet, of your rifle; now I see your wife and your face and our fellowship. Forgive me, comrade. We always see it too late. Why do they never tell us that you are poor devils like us, that your mothers are just as anxious as ours, and that we have the same fear of death, and the same dying and the same agony – forgive me, comrade; how could you be my enemy?”
