As anyone who's trudged through a few of my interminable comments here will know, I'm a pretty cynical old bastard. But I had an experience in a similar vein to what you describe earlier today, and it caught be completely by surprise.
It's Remembrance Sunday today. In Britain and Commonwealth countries, this honours those who have died in military service. The main national ceremony takes place at the Cenotaph - a memorial to the British and Commonwealth military members who have died in all Britain's conflicts since the First World War. But every city, town and even most small villages in Britain have a war memorial where the names of local people who died in wars are listed, and ceremonies of all sorts of sizes take place at most of those memorials on the Sunday nearest the 11th of November.
The basic form of the ceremony is that people gather at the memorial before 11:00 because there's a national two-minute silence at that time. In smaller places, people arrive as individuals, but if it's in a town of any size, there's usually a silent parade through the town, usually composed of veterans organisation members, representatives from the various levels of government, kids from the various scout-type groups, and some active service military members if there's a base nearby. The service often starts with a short reading from the Bible, and there's always a reading of a poem by a First World War poet about those who died in that war. Then, if there's a bugler or trumpeter available, they play The Last Post (which is equivalent to Taps in the USA, but The Last Post is much, much longer). If everything has run exactly to plan, the last note of the trumpet fades away just as 11:00 arrives. If there's a church nearby, the bells ring out the hour (even if they don't normally, due to the locals being annoyed by the hourly or quarter-hourly racket 24/7), and there's then the two minutes of silence. This is followed by another prayer, short poetry reading, or both, and then representatives of local organisations or just individuals lay wreaths of (paper) poppies at the base of the memorial.
Because our daughter is in the Scouts, we attended the service in the town (population 8,000) nearest us today. As it happened, one of the British Army regiments has been training at a nearby live-firing tank and artillery range for the last few weeks, so there were around 300 uniformed service members present, and easily as many civilians if not more.
I'm an atheist, so all the prayers were just mealy-mouthed BS as far as I'm concerned. As I say, I'm pretty damn cynical, and one of the things that has always bugged me about Remembrance Sunday is how people come out for a few minutes once a year to honour the war dead, but I'm sure virtually none of them ever spare a thought about them and the lessons that should have been learned from their deaths during the other 364 days of the year. Few people care much about living veterans, and many obviously don't care about people in the military now, since they'll spout the most blood-thirsty crap you can imagine when they suggest how the problems of the world should be solved, while most people are either indifferent or feel patriotic pride if the government of the day decides to send British troops into some hell-hole for the flimsiest of reasons.
And yet as I stood there today in the utter silence, surrounded by a few hundred civilians of all sorts and with a triple file of uniformed soldiers standing at parade rest in front of me and stretching out to both sides, I was fucking moved, and a little surreptitious eye-dabbing was required.
Thanks for the story. War is nasty. I’ve worked many nights in dead quiet computer labs for free, making sure the balance of power did not become destabilized. My quiet determination was because my reaction to the whole thing is a bit like yours.
Do you cry/get goosebumps during beautiful moments?
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As anyone who's trudged through a few of my interminable comments here will know, I'm a pretty cynical old bastard. But I had an experience in a similar vein to what you describe earlier today, and it caught be completely by surprise.
It's Remembrance Sunday today. In Britain and Commonwealth countries, this honours those who have died in military service. The main national ceremony takes place at the Cenotaph - a memorial to the British and Commonwealth military members who have died in all Britain's conflicts since the First World War. But every city, town and even most small villages in Britain have a war memorial where the names of local people who died in wars are listed, and ceremonies of all sorts of sizes take place at most of those memorials on the Sunday nearest the 11th of November.
The basic form of the ceremony is that people gather at the memorial before 11:00 because there's a national two-minute silence at that time. In smaller places, people arrive as individuals, but if it's in a town of any size, there's usually a silent parade through the town, usually composed of veterans organisation members, representatives from the various levels of government, kids from the various scout-type groups, and some active service military members if there's a base nearby. The service often starts with a short reading from the Bible, and there's always a reading of a poem by a First World War poet about those who died in that war. Then, if there's a bugler or trumpeter available, they play The Last Post (which is equivalent to Taps in the USA, but The Last Post is much, much longer). If everything has run exactly to plan, the last note of the trumpet fades away just as 11:00 arrives. If there's a church nearby, the bells ring out the hour (even if they don't normally, due to the locals being annoyed by the hourly or quarter-hourly racket 24/7), and there's then the two minutes of silence. This is followed by another prayer, short poetry reading, or both, and then representatives of local organisations or just individuals lay wreaths of (paper) poppies at the base of the memorial.
Because our daughter is in the Scouts, we attended the service in the town (population 8,000) nearest us today. As it happened, one of the British Army regiments has been training at a nearby live-firing tank and artillery range for the last few weeks, so there were around 300 uniformed service members present, and easily as many civilians if not more.
I'm an atheist, so all the prayers were just mealy-mouthed BS as far as I'm concerned. As I say, I'm pretty damn cynical, and one of the things that has always bugged me about Remembrance Sunday is how people come out for a few minutes once a year to honour the war dead, but I'm sure virtually none of them ever spare a thought about them and the lessons that should have been learned from their deaths during the other 364 days of the year. Few people care much about living veterans, and many obviously don't care about people in the military now, since they'll spout the most blood-thirsty crap you can imagine when they suggest how the problems of the world should be solved, while most people are either indifferent or feel patriotic pride if the government of the day decides to send British troops into some hell-hole for the flimsiest of reasons.
And yet as I stood there today in the utter silence, surrounded by a few hundred civilians of all sorts and with a triple file of uniformed soldiers standing at parade rest in front of me and stretching out to both sides, I was fucking moved, and a little surreptitious eye-dabbing was required.
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dude_Jones
1 year ago
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Thanks for the story. War is nasty. I’ve worked many nights in dead quiet computer labs for free, making sure the balance of power did not become destabilized. My quiet determination was because my reaction to the whole thing is a bit like yours.
“Be the best”