Nigel Pizzle had seen enough, had heard enough, had endured more of their honouring the dead than he could take in. He was full of wreaths and medals, berets and uniforms half-and-half, pieced together to make parade and salute.
Remembrance Day was over, the stories had been told, expanded and cut, stumbled over and retold as though the vet had missed the scenes he spoke of. It was over again, the poppies were collected, the change cashed in and the clothes for show and parade were boxed for next time, if that were to come.
Everyone was solemn, quiet, respectful, on his best behaviour, so quiet the birds were heard to sing, and voices in the breeze reminded those open to these honourings of the dead sounded like the voices of those who used to be, before their foes blew them up or severed them in half, riddled them with rifle shot and sent them off to a soldier’s hell. Whispers were what was heard, unless little Billy tugged his mommy’s hand and urged to go. “I’m cold.” “I have to number one.” “I have to . . . have to . . . have to” and the Good Reverend would pause his drone among the poppies . . .”row on row.”
We all wanted to go, wanted it to be over, wrenched with grief yet again or standing and waiting on behalf of someone we never knew, would know. Jim was there because this service he’d drawn from a hat, the veterans now so few they had to be spread across a two-day schedule, some here others there, and Jim was here today, and would be gone tomorrow attending dressed once more, to honour his Legion and his Navy crew, the ones lost at sea. Preachers, politicians, vets, sons and daughters and grandchildren, the curious and passers-by, the Officer at Arms and local traffic cop, the ambulance not but a block away just in case, Ted and Joe wheeling their chairs as close as they could get, and the First Arm of Nightengales, the seven that were left, they all were there again. Year after year these and many more assembled and remembered. And did so every year even though nothing much changed, even though millions continued to die as collateral damage nuisances and unfortunately in the way.
One minute of silence. That’s what we really prepared for. They did, for I didn’t agree, on the eleventh day or the eleventh month at the eleventh hour, we were asked to bow our heads for a moment of silence where we would thank those who went on our behalf. Indeed, for if they didn’t they’d be fined, put in jail or both, at least vilified and possibly abused and beaten up, called the enemy within, stripped of their rights, the ones they were going to war to defend, to wrest from the clutches of those who were stamping them out.
What does it mean that we see images from actual fights, exchanges, conditions, faces of soldiers and officers and leaders, the one who precipitated the war in the first place, done so with heaving hearts and trembling hands, carried forth to sign with some jolly good show slogan of national fixity and strength? What good do these pictures, these stories, these wrinkled old men and their friends do for the young, so that they would rather not serve?
What good do they do when the young will eagerly go, will gladly man a bench, willingly handle with dexterous skill joy-sticks that could fly hundreds, maybe thousands of deadly drones into insurgent haunts? And then get to watch their targets sail through their beloved country’s air?
What good this droning on and on? When war is being fashioned for the kids?