remember
This house stands,
grey upon a scarred hill,
Where battles raged,
where blood and bone sank deep
In earth that bears our weight,
our lives,
our will.
And here,
as children play,
untroubled,
free,
They tread on dust
of those who walked before,
Their laughter
drowning echoes of the cries
From young men’s throats—
those voices silenced sore,
Forgotten faces under silent skies.
Once, boys unfit for war
wore war’s own guise,
Their youth and innocence
torn swift away,
For some strange cause,
for kings,
for empty lies.
They fell as fathers,
husbands,
sons,
to lay
as ransom paid
to those who’d claim our peace,
by arms and hearts
they gave in grim release.
And now,
beneath these skies
that break with light,
We carry them,
their weight,
their blood,
their fight.
For us,
for you,
for those still yet unborn,
their hollowed names will sound
this mournful morn.
To serve is to know something deeply—both the pride of being part of something greater and the solemn weight of what war truly entails. Remembrance Day is not only a day to honour those who served but a day to remember the harrowing cost, a lesson we must carry with us so that such tragedies do not recur.
As Erich Maria Remarque wrote in All Quiet on the Western Front, “A hospital alone shows what war is.” In that truth, we find the heart of remembrance: to witness and to learn. We must face the past, not just to honour those who came before but to teach ourselves the compassion needed to avoid such suffering again.
Love and light 🍁🧡🍁
Beautiful.
Yes! Yes! The hospital is the heart of it all—a monument to blood, sweat, and shattered humanity. You step inside, and it’s all there, every dirty, savage truth laid bare in the sterile fluorescence. War isn’t just trenches and valor; it’s torn flesh, broken minds, and the weary eyes of nurses who have seen too much. Every bed in that hospital is a testament, a gut-wrenching reminder of what we do to ourselves in the name of borders and banners.
To remember isn’t just to whisper platitudes on Remembrance Day; it’s to stare down the truth, to let it crawl under your skin and haunt you. It’s to see the future written in the scars of the past and shout, “Never again!” It’s to confront the idea that we are the architects of every drop of blood spilled, every lost limb, every empty gaze. Honoring the dead isn’t enough—remembrance demands we look into the heart of darkness and reckon with it.
Because if we don’t learn—if we don’t let the brutal, bitter truth sear into our collective conscience—then we’re doomed to repeat this hell.