Remembrance

 

At the eleventh hour of the eleventh

day of the eleventh month of the calendar 

we sacrifice a moment of silence in

contemplation of those who once sacrificed 

their lives as they fell in combat against

an ideology whose perpetrators

threatened to storm the ramparts of the

free world for whom justice and liberty

meant peace, security, good governance.

Theirs but to do or die, and they did both

in service to humanity and in the process 

committed themselves to acts of physical harm

and death at their hands to stop the forces 

that countenanced mass murder as a means 

to their sinister end. Fiercely loyal to their own 

leaders and nations' aspirations combatants 

on both sides viewed one another as enemies-

to-the-death and in that spirit wounded and 

killed with the abandonment of righteousness. 

The arbiters of fascism lost their cause to the 

followers of democracy leaving their legacy 

of misery and bereavement to the future for their

descendants to mourn and to disown those

acts of violent aggression against those of

courageous defiance. They died, we grieve.