Rest in Peace, Harry Patch and Henry Allingham

The last British Veteran (possibly the last veteran) of the Great War (WW 1) is now gone beyond. Before that, one of the remaining few to pass beyond was Henry Allingham, the last founding member of the RAF and another veteran of WW 1.

http://www.cbc.ca/photogallery/world/2443/

My Grandfather fought in the war and lived with the after effects for the rest of his life. It was a conflict that even we modern fork, inured to TV genocides and ethnic cleansings, and raised on televised real-world wars like the Persian Gulf War and the War in Afghanistan, would not have been able to endure like spectators. That war had men drowning in the mud, dying from disease, sleeping in trenches up to their midriffs in water with corpses and rats, dying from triangular bayonets, artillery shrapnel, mustard gas, the new horror of the anks, and the dreaded machine gun. The scale of casualties was vast and hard to believe compared to our losses in current wars.

So far, Canada has lost 127 men in Afghanistan. In less time than we've been in Afghanistan, we lost 67,000 killed in WW1. Think about it - that's over 527 times as many casualties! We think we've lost enough people in Afghanistan to justify us coming home... we've lost more Canadians than that in single days of fighting in WW 1.

http://europeanhistory.about.com/cs/worldwar1/a/blww1casualties.htm

WW 1 seems in may ways to have been a pointless war. It changed some political boundaries and killed a lot of people but it lacked the clear moral imperative of defeating Fascism or blocking Communist expansion of later conflicts. The only moral imperative was to not be dictated to by another nation and the whole war reminds me of a family feud at the highest level.

And yet, it claimed so many lives.

Take this brief opportunity to visit that link and contemplate the number of people all of the countries lost. The loss of human potential from the War... from individual battles like the abortive attack on Galipoli, commemorated in "Waltzing Matilda" (song). The horror of mustard gas, which is a gas which, when elements bind with the moisture (water) in your lungs forms hydrochloric acid in the lungs and throat. The horror of attacking through mud that can swallow you with a mis-step.

Think of all of that and consider yourself lucky to be living in the hear and now. We've had it good, by comparison. Whenever we get gloomy about our future and all the ills of the world today, just think about those numbers and the horrible meat-grinders of days gone by.

No, we've got it good. And we've got evey chance to make it better. Part of that is remembering how bad it was and how bad it could get again if we let it. And then striving not to let things go that way ever again.