My great uncle uncle Bill who was a cook and never saw any real fighting while he was stationed in Great Britain during the Second World War and never stopped talking about it, and his brother Art, who was wounded and rescued at Dieppe and who never talked about it.

The diversity of reasons men and women volunteered to put their lives at risk, the costs many of them and their families paid, and sometimes are still paying, and that those responsible for the decisions related to war rarely pay a price themselves.

I read a history of World War I last year and I still can't get over the tremendous loss of life in battles like those that took place at Ypres and other places. What pain and suffering this must of caused to millions of families. I'll remember those young men who probably didn't even know what they were getting into, yet lost their lives there. 

I'll also remember our friend Gordon Cosby, who was a ground-breaking minister who started Church of the Saviour in DC (and married my wife and I). He was a chaplain during World War II and told the story of the hundreds of battlefield funerals he held on one day, D-day, including that of his best friend. Something I won't ever forget.

I will be thinking of the complexity of war, the challenge of being powerful and the duty to know when to intercede and when not to....and how there is never the one perfect answer.

i will think of the leaders today who ponder options.

i will reflect on the war that goes on daily that we cannot see, the invasions through cyber-space, the risk we have to our infrastructure and those who fight daily to protect it.

I will ponder on the challenge of countries in war, civil war, disruption, and financial chaos.

I will think of the old ones, the one who remember, my mother-in-law who is a veteran and how many friends she lost in wwII.

I will run out of time as my mind tries to grasp the complexity.

i will be sad.

I shall be sad - and angry.

Our remembrance day has turned into a very selective rememberance. It's become thoroughl militarized and inane.

the majority of casualties in World Ware One were NOT soldiers. They were innocent men, women and children who were murdered, starved of sickened to death.  that wass even truer of World War Two.

And we were lied to with the myth we were defending our freedom. In fact, the only country that has ever threatened our freedom is the US. There was never the slightest possibility of an invasion of North America in WW1, WW2,  Korea, Libya, or Afghanistan. Don'tpeople every catch on that the US stayed out of both ward for a long time? Do Americans not appreciate freedom as much as we do?

And don't feed me the line that we had to help the Jews. Canada was almost as racist as Germany, and it did nothing to help the Jews.

As for Korea, we weren't there to protect an innocent country from an aggressor. If we were, then why didn't we send troops to protect Vietnam against the US?

Now, in recent wars, we are seeing the biggest civilian death rate ever. Iraq is a good example. And we have people starved and impoverished by wars for generations after. And we have people, innocent people, thousands of them, killed by leftover cluster bombs, agent organge and radioactive ammunition every year.

Is it heroes who are killing all those civilians? Do we clap hands for the heroes who bombed Tokyo and Hiroshima and Nagasaki, kllling hundreds of thousands of civilians?

Then you have the boys as young as twelve who were drafted by Hitler to fight trained troops in the last days of the war. If a 17 year old who goes to war is a hero, then a 12 year old who does must be a super hero. So let's have a cheer for all thos young Naziis.

And if we were brave, then so were the Germans and Japanese and italians and North Koreans and Iraqis Afghanis who fought us.

And those brave lads who went to war to save democracy? Most of them couldn't spell democracy. The average education of a Canadian soldier in WW2 was grade 6. And if you walk among the miles of gravestones in our military cemetries in France, The Netherlands, Hong Kong, what's striking is what a high proportion were 17, 18, 19,,,

We have turned November 11 into a circus of babble about glory and heroism.

We need to grow up and take a serious look at what our wars have been really about. We need to talk about why so many heroes never fit into life again - ending up homeless or violent or as suicides.

The churches should be leading this serious look. But too many of the clergy are out in the field waving pom poms and cheering for the home team.

We are not committed to generations of war without end. And only a fool could see glory in them. They are, for all sides, festivals of murder and rape and torture and theft. And they're all fought solely to make a few very rich people even richer.

i will be thinking of how many lives were affected forever by these wars. = alcoholism broken marriages and many other hurtful things.

Then you have the women who were left behind. it was quite a struggle for my mother alone - and I expect even harder for many others.

I am one of the few contributors to WonderCafe who actually experienced and remember WWII.

I was five years old. We, my mother, my bigger sister, my little brother, and I were part of the refugee trek that rolled slowy westward, away from the dreaded Red Army. We were sitting on a freight train in the middle of Germany, on an open flatbed car, when the train we were on was repeatedly attacked by Allied fighter bombers. Whenever an attack started, the air raid siren sounded, and people scrambled off the train in a mad rush for nearby fields and forests.

My mother soon got tired of running and resigned herself and us children to our fate. She covered us with a grey blanket and told us the airplanes will think we are coal and won't shoot at us. I, however, lifted the blanket and observed the attack.

The fighter bombers swooped down on us, dropping their bombs, and when they were low enough shooting at us with their guns. The anti aircraft cannon behind the locomotive shot back, and one plane came trundling to the ground, smoking, with a wing off. Part of the train and tracks were destroyed, and some people were killed or injured.

This is the first vivid memory of my life. I'll never forget it. This and other war experiences left me traumatized. There was no counselling for us children traumatized by the war, and I was afraid of people for a long time afterwards. I was way into adulthood when I finally got over it.

I have mixed feelings when I see war glorified and justified and Germans vilified on Rembrance Day. I don't watch Rembrance Day ceremonies and don't buy red poppies. 

Funny, I don't see war glorified and justified.

What I hear and remember is things like "in flanders field", which for me speak of deep sadness and a requirement to work for peace.....

No, Pinga, war isn't always glorified or justified on Rembrance Day. Only sometimes does it creep in.

The line "Pick up the battle with the foe" in "Flanders Fields", for instance, could be regarded as a challenge to continue the war. To someone who has once been part of the enemy nation, this does not sound like an appeal for peace.

That we Canadians of German origin have cause to hang our heads in shame on Rembrance Day probably is due to our own hangups. But there are no public events that lord their national wrongs over Americans, Canadians, the French or the British? Have they not committed any? Or is it more convenient to emphasize the national wrongs of other nations and forget one's own? 

Umm, there is public rememberances of Hiroshima .  It, to me, is the same way that I think of remembrance day here.  never again...never again as people do we let it get that far.

I do not see the "foe" as the german people. I am sorry that is how you hear it, or how it has been communicated to you.

For me, the foe is that which allows people to allow people like those that allow leaders which take us into such terrible situations.

To be fair, it is what scares me about Harper and Ford..for different reasons. They appeal to the lowest of the low amongst us..and induce fear.

Yes, Pinga, there is a public remembrance of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And some members of the British Bomber Squadron laid down wreaths in memory of the fire bombing of Dresden.

I agree. The "foe" is the enemy within that permits us to be manipulated to go to war against each other. The "foe" could also be those who are doing the manipulating.

But does it come across like that in the poem?

It is how I interpret it and how I was taught to interpret it.

Yes, good, I'm glad. Thank you for the clarification.

You just made my Remembrance Day.

Remembrance day is, for the most part, a celebration of militarism and glory. And the church joins in that enthusiastically. I have heard clergy  this year talking about those Canadians who died for freedom in Afghanistan.

Afghanistan didn't threaten any country's freedom - and certainly not the freedom of Canada..

Here, in New Brunswick, the veterans h ave organized a tour of schools since they feel the school do not teach enough of the glory of war. And the government and the schools let them do it.

Overwhelming, our churches support this kind of approach - and reflect it.

Flander's Fields, by the way, was written as an encouragement for war. And the author died in a war that had nothing to do with anybody's freedom. Like most wars, that was purely an economic one.

Thinking about how war is not the answer that brings lasting peace anywhere.

I will be remenbering peole in my family who whose children and grandchildren still deal with the damge caused by their fathers/grandfathers injuries and or death

Me too Alex.  There is an army of the invisible wounded around us.  My parents lost family, friends and neighbours.  Their fathers fought and lived or died - leaving unsupported women and children with everlasting scars.  Many of my childhood playmates had lost family to the war,  The slightly older kids, like Arminius, saw and heard things that no child should have to endure. 

It makes me weep.

I wish politicians had more sense.    

i have attended many a nov. 11 ceremony. I have never attended one that did not glorify war. Nor have i ever attended one that recognized the millions of innocent people all over the world who were murdered or raped or tortured by our side.

People jjoin in a war for a great many reasons. Saving democracy is rarely one of them. In fact, in the case of South Korea we went to a dictatorship to defend it - and we left a dictator in power when we pulled out. We did not bring freedom to anywhere in Africa. Africa and other areas that were under western control had to fight for their own freedom agter 1945. And we're back there now to reconquer all those old colonies.

But the Nov. 11 ceremonies are usually and exclusively about the losses on our side only.

The soldiers who died in the Boer war were not defending our freedom. Nor, in fact, were those who fought in World War One.

They were victims - on both sides. A funeral is, indeed, to remember those who died, and what we owe them. Do not confuse that with pure and one-side eulogizing and glorifying.

The churches, in partciular, should be more cautious in suggesting God was on our side.