IKN

I received generous feedback from people over yesterday’s rememberance day post. It’s truly an honour to have contacted so many fine people via this blog during its time as a humble corner of cyberspace. I’d like to share with you one mail in particular from reader ‘RB’, received yesterday. I’ve been given permission to reprint here by the author, so here goes with no further comment from me.

Here’s my regiment where I served for two years (reserve)

My father was a Major in the Highlanders, formerly a Lt. with the British Navy on HMS Constance, served in Korea. My mother was WRNS, which is how she met my dad. Grandfathers on both sides served in WWI & II.

There’s a lot of remembering to do on Remembrance Day, so rather than spread myself thin, I focus on these guys who never came back:

I spent a day there back in 1992 on a family visit to Thailand. What struck me was how young most of them were – the average age was about 20. Everything they had and could have had was taken from them.

I’m not a religious man, but I’m not foolish enough to think that I know it all. Is there a divine force, do we have an eternal soul, are we judged at the end of our time? I have no idea, but I try to live as if it were true. You lose nothing from the effort, and in fact gain from it in this world, if not the next. For the sake of those young men, I hope that it is true. If anyone deserves eternal life it’s them. That’s my prayer for Remembrance Day.