War Remembered

A side note: You may wonder why I chose this picture as the title for my War Remembrance Section of my website and quite frankly; it's a valid question. For years I have been a history buff; so much so that after getting a degree in physics, I went to get a degree in history just for fun. I have loved history since I can remember. Having lived in Europe in my twenties, I was blessed to have visited so many wonderful places laced with history: Belgium, France, England, Germany, Austria, Russia, just to name a few. During the summer of 2007, I returned to Europe (France) on a Professional Development Canadian Battlefield Tour with about 20 teachers from all over Canada. I was the only one who spoke French so they asked me to make a speech at a Remembrance Ceremony. I was not sure what to say or what to focus on. Oddly enough it was this picture which helped me write my speech. During our trip, we visited sites like Beaumont-Hamel, Vimy Ridge, Normandy, Dieppe and many many other sites where the numbers of people killed both Allied and German were difficult to absorb. The poem "In Flanders Fields" really hits home when you see "the crosses row on row ..." and then the thousands of names for which bodies have never been found. So in my speech I said just that and I then asked a tough question. Was it worth it? Was it worth sending our Canadians to Europe in both the First and Second World War? I paused for a second and then told the people listening to my speech that the answer was right here ... on their beaches. These beaches were the site of massive battles. While we were looking at all the memorials along these beaches (this one at Courcelles-Sur-Mer) their children and grand-children were playing and laughing on those very beaches. The cost of freedom is very high, but in the end, is this not what our fallen would want to see?