I have no real reason to feel particularly attached to the armed services. I have never served – nor have any of my close family except my Grandad of course (more about him at a later date). I am not even particularly patriotic.
The older I get however, the more it upsets me that we have sent (and are sending) men and women to conflicts that results in their death and or maiming.
My Dad’s national service was spent as a merchant seaman (Engineering officer) on several ships owned by the Royal Mail Lines company; ferrying passengers, cargo and servicemen (to the Korean War) during the 1950′s.
A couple of weeks ago I was able to visit the Merchant Seaman Tower Hill Memorial near Tower Hill in London. I have driven past it many times and had always wanted to see what it was and walking back to Wapping from a training course one day, I took the opportunity.
I was overwhelmed.
The Monument and sunken garden lists the names of thirty six thousand merchant seamen who were killed in WWI and WWII.
I stood and looked at the sheer quantity of names it contains, and thought about the immense loss of life.
The people it represents is a small drop in the ocean (literally) of the total loss of life in the two wars.
It moved me to tears.
As I approach my 40th year on the planet I grow tired of our capacity to mame and slaughter each other in the name of governments and religious ideologies.
Our current involvement in both the Afghanistan and Iraq conflicts are (in my opinion) pointless wastes of lives and money that the justification for which were built upon shaky cases at best and outright lies at worst.
I like many other people feel that people of power and influence in the US and UK administrations have used 9/11 and other outrages as an opportunity to profiteer.
Organisations such as the Carlyle group and others, run by ex-world leaders, intelligence chiefs and industrialists, are milking the USA and UK for all they are worth. Complicit to the process are the current leaders who’s nest feathering is plunging their countries into massive debt.
Meanwhile, on the front line, the faithful servants of their administrations, the servicemen and women who through duty enact their masters commands, suffer the death and injury inevitable when fighting a battle with a force who feel that they are either defending their rightfully owned borders or who are filled with the religious ferver that justifies any action to defend what they feel is righteous.
I suspect many many more monuments and sunken gardens will be built before we as a species accept that war is futile and that the time, money and effort we spend trying to hurt each other would be far better spent making the world a safer healthier place to live.
(Editied – BW)