Books and banter by W.H.Manke

It’s Remembrance Day today.  Have you ever wondered why we wear a poppy and why we gather to remember?  Our youth, I’m sure are wondering about it.  Without anyone pointing them to the answers they might get the mistaken idea that what happens on November 11 each year glorifies war.  So what is it we should never forget?  What should we always remember?

Yes, we should remember those who gave up their life fighting against oppression.  They did not go to glorify war.  They joined in the battle, because evil regimes threatened their loved ones’ freedom and oppressed other people.

We must never forget that freedom and peace sometimes comes at an enormous individual and collective price.  How fortunate people in this country are can be seen in the fact that few who have never experience war firsthand really understanding what it means to have lost all basic freedoms and to live in fear daily.

It is vital that we now always guard the freedoms we have lest we lose them.  No group, no country is immune to those with evil and selfish goals and ambition and would not stop short to enslave others to reach those goals. 

Years ago I wrote a poem in memory of my father who was killed when I was five.  He was not a soldier, but he was a citizen of a country held in the grip of an evil dictator and his hordes of henchmen.  Near the end of the war all males older than fourteen had to report to defend against advancing armies.  The Russian army had advance close to Breslau or home, then a city in East Germany, now called Wroclaw in Poland.  A few weeks earlier we and all civilians had been ordered to flee to points west and south.  That late winter he lost his life.  We have never been able to find out where he is buried.  One unsubstantiated report we did receive said he was shot while forced to dig a mass grave.  The poem below, “Did the Bugle Weep for You?” I wrote years ago a day or two before Remembrance Day.

Did the Bugle Weep for You?

My father, young and full of hopes and dreams

Of life yet to be lived for many days there after                                      

Of your mother’s smile, your wife’s soft touch

Of your sons’ and daughters’ smiles and laughter.

In the last days cold duty called you to take arms

To defend against advancing army’s guns

An army of men also with dreams and hopes

For their future days and waiting loved ones.

My father, young and full of hopes and dreams

A dictator’s senseless war one cold, dark day slew

Your hopes, your dreams and your life still young.

At the end of your day – did the bugle weep for you?

(WHM in my father’s memory)