Dear Editor:
I spent the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month at home on Remembrance Day. I thought of when I was a kid during the war, when we lived in West Vancouver. I remember the flag in the window of the neighbours down the street, who had lost, I was told, a son in the war in Europe. I remember seeing the mother, looking at her to see if she looked different, if she were sad.
I remember my first public appearance with the West Van Boys' Band, playing Land of Hope and Glory at the Cenotaph over and over again. It was hard to hold up my trombone, which was almost as tall as I was. The procession of dignitaries and mothers and fathers laying wreaths seemed to go on forever. It was so sad, and I found it hard not to cry. I remember the reading of In Flanders Fields.
That was then, this is now, and I remember the talk over the years of the war to end all wars, from 1914 to 1918, and warnings since then from people such as former president and Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, who, in his farewell speech to the American people in 1961, spoke of the unwarranted influence and disastrous power of the American military-industrial complex and of its danger to peace. As we continue to bring coffins and wounded soldiers home, have we learned nothing? That there is no glory in war? Can we justify more billions spent on military hardware but then neglect the soldiers who have put their lives on the line and, as pointed out in a recent editorial are "struggling with inadequate government support and post-traumatic stress disorder." Such unconscionable neglect has caused a number of veterans to launch a class-action lawsuit against the very government that sent them to war and now wants to wash its hands of them with inadequate lump sum settlements. I will remember them and their families, and I will remember a Harper government that is anxious to ape our southern neighbour in endless conflicts of aggression, one after another.
For all the victims of war, the military and the millions of civilian men, women and children who have been killed or wounded and had their homes, their commodities and their countries destroyed, I will remember.
Bill Zander, New Westminster
