Remembrance

Remembrance day is upon us again and over time, as people remember less what its message should reflect, it has become a different affair; a nationalist affair with a very narrow bandwidth of remembrance all saturated in politics.  I wonder what the fallen would make of it; not much I'd imagine. Anyway, walking in the forest remembering, and passing this 200 year or so old Oak which had survived a German bombing of a nearby searchlight position, got me to thinking about who and what else we overlook when remembering war. Beyond all the people we remember or choose not to remember. I thought of all the animals, domestic and wild, that must have been killed, all the birds, all the fish, in fact, all the creature caught up in war. Then there's all the trees splintered and woodland flattened. The vast tracts of unique and beautiful landscapes scorched and leveled. Swathes of precious environments poisoned and laid waste as a consequence of war itself or in the pursuit of the minerals to support it. Fuck! As Edwin Starr put it 'war what is it good for........absolutely nothing'.