REMEMBRANCE DAY

[Gil Boyd]

Thought I would share this with you all written by my son:

What does Remembrance Sunday mean to me?

I would like to say I remember them every day. But I do not. But I try, I have poppies inked into my skin.

I and friends have lost so many brothers and sisters over the years through conflict, accidents, poor health, early aging and suicide, that I often, ashamedly, have to look up their names and remind myself of where they fitted in to my particular story.

Being an old soldier means I have a unique perspective. I have survived, I have lived through risk, through bullets, bombs and blast and come out the other side. This means that I am privileged. I am privileged to breath today, to experience life, kiss my wife, to hold my children, notice a sunrise. Privileges the lost do not have. What, I do feel is the tragedy of it all, and I mean that in the true Shakespearian sense of tragedy. Young life on the altar of sacrifice. The false nobility of young death, the desperate need to prove worthiness, the ugly sin of battlefield death that ironically does become beautiful.

Some of the lost I did not know but find myself duty bound to speak their names, those of my tribes, of the Parachute Regiment and latterly the Royal Army Medical Corps.

Some however, I knew well, and I genuinely do feel their loss on a personal level.

Death like this shapes you, and because of its ruinous nature must convert into a positive force and drive you, the living, forward, otherwise that sacrifice is empty, void, spent.

I have no control of what happens to me, other than preparedness, or what happens in the wider world, other than quiet observation, and an attempt to deal with the things in front of me, but I try to make sure that those sacrifices are at the very centre of what I do.

I recently spoke to a widow of a close friend who suggested that her late husbands’ death had been proved worthless by the fall of Afghanistan to evil. Instinctually, I was able to say NO this wasn’t true. The reason this isn’t true I believe is conversion. Conversion of the sinister into beauty. This man’s death as he expired, inspired me to build. To build on my skill, to help build others. I would like to think I have done this, to the best of my ability. And I am just one.

I told her of a baby I resuscitated and handed back to a grieving mother, the mother then took her daughter who was not breathing minutes before, and fed her from her breast, tears streaming down her face. Without this man’s death I would never have taken this path, I would never have been there, I would never have been inspired to be a medic. This baby was just one life, and arguably in the natural order, worth the sacrifice. However, this baby is one of hundreds of people that my personal path and profession has led me to help, to save, to build. And I am but one.

So, what I think I am saying, is use sacrifice, make sure that light burns out the dark. Recognise your privilege and be a force for good. Expiration breath out, Inspiration breathe in. Life.
Lest we forget

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