On Remembrance Day

Every year for as long as I can remember I have attended my school's remembrance service. Since I officially "started school" I've been to four different schools and every year I stood through the two minutes silence not really understanding it. People died and I understood that and I'd heard the statistics of how many were lost. I still didn't relate to it. These were people from a different era and I have never lived through a war that I have perceived to affect me and when I was younger I couldn't feel anything for the hundreds of thousands of people who died and I would feel guilty about this but I still couldn't feel any empathy.

Three years ago my school took me on a week long history trip to France and Belgium which had been romantically named "The Chateau Trip." We were stating in this "chateau" which happened to be a large house with dorm rooms in the outbuildings. It was essentially a youth hostel trip to learn about the first world war and we visited several large graveyards to do with the Somme. In particular we visited this huge British (and the commonwealth if I remember correctly) graveyard. All you could see was row my row of white gravestones and at the back a round wall with names of bodies that weren't found. This made an impression at the time but mainly the feeling of peace you get rarely. However I came back home, only thinking of the large amounts of chocolate I had bought in Ypres and what was the start of my friendship group collapsing into anarchy. That big white graveyard left my mind and wouldn't return for another year.

I slept through the two minute silence that year. I had an agonising infection of tonsillitis and had to go to the local minor injuries late that evening so I slept in until 11.40. Still, I wasn't upset that I'd missed the silence.

Year 10 came around after the past nightmarish 6 months and that year I stood up in those two minutes. The trumpet sounded and suddenly it hit me. The 14 past years of not empathising were hit by this mass of emotion that I'd never felt. The big white graveyard had affected me.

I feel like we need experiences to relate.

I feel like we can't understand atrocities unless something links us to them.

I feel like we need to be educated.

I don't know what this blog will do, but hopefully it will do some good.