We Will Remember - Nathan Jeffers

The bells tolled in the distance - breaking the quietness of the cold crisp November morning. I pause from my work, my hands poised above my keyboard. I knew what time it was without even looking at the wall. Eleven o’clock. The remembrance had begun.

The bells pealed again. My thoughts jump to the war. The ‘War to end all wars’. The horrors and tragedies that had befallen the world. The dark curtain that had fallen on so many young soldiers fighting for their country. The curtain that had rocked the world.

The bells continued to break the peacefulness of the morning. The peace that we might not know if not for the sacrifice others made to the god of war. The ultimate sacrifice where others died so we might live. A sacrifice we cannot even fathom.

The bells thundered like artillery as they rang for the fourth time. I tried to place myself there in the bloody frontlines of the trenches, but my imagination can barely imagine the horrors of war. The brutality. The savagery. Death all around me - almost sucking the life from what is left around it. Even nature itself seems to have forsaken the world here.

A bell clanged loudly from somewhere in the battlefield, I watched in both awe and horror as out of holes in the ground thousands of men run forward in a counter-attack. Friend and foe clashing in hand to hand combat. I look closely, but amongst the red poppies I did not see any heroes or villains. I did not see any victors no matter who won the battle. For life had been lost - human life.

The reveille bell sang mournfully. The battle was over but for many, much more was over. Death had won again and had filled its coffers up. Bodies by the dozen were being carried to a pit and buried. Many were nameless. Those unknown soldiers that had left their hometowns full of life and fervour - now gone, but not forgotten.

A single dreary bell rang - matching the weather and atmosphere. Widows and children stood sniffling in a crowded church as a list was being read out. Flowers lay strewn at the altar in a clash of colour for black encased everything else. The world was that much darker for the light of human life was snuffed out. Families broken, wives and husbands torn apart, children made parentless. Few escaped the horrors of war even if they did not see the battlefield.

The bong of Big Ben ringing again brought me back to the here and now. Yet my thoughts continued. The ‘War to end all wars’ did not stop the brutality and evil intents in men’s hearts. The terribleness of war forgotten and selfish desires encouraged. Another war sprung up in the embers of the last one engulfing the world in even more fury and anger. Experts say over 88 million died in stopping a madman. 88 million lives snuffed out. Death had won again.

The bells of conflict have not rocked the major nations of the world since - leading some to coin the term “the long peace.” Yet we still make weapons of mass destruction. Weapons that would destroy the earth should they ever be used. Death by button instead of trigger. Holding this over the earth as countries vie for supremacy like bullies in a school yard.

The bells have rang in remembrance for decades and perhaps we are finally learning the sanctity of life. The sacredness of peace. The true enemy - death - claiming fewer and fewer lives in the conflicts that rage in other parts of the world. Countries breaking down barriers like the Berlin Wall is teaching us the value of being a person and a citizen of the world.

The bells tolled for the final time. The eleventh bell, the eleventh hour, the eleventh day, the eleventh month. Silence fills the streets, the only sound caused by the wind rustling through the paper red poppies. I stand with thousands and millions of others as we remember the sacrifice of others and the pain and tragedy of war. A yearly reminder that there are no victors in war. A reminder that we should learn from our past mistakes.

“We will remember them”.