“Remembrance Day is one brief moment in our calendar year when we can salute and pay homage to so many brave souls who made the ultimate sacrifice to preserve our cherished freedoms and rights.”
When I wrote WWII Flying Stories, I was always mindful of the immense debt owed to the lost generations and sought to honour those who, ‘shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old.’
In World War I, a generation of young men, whose lives had barely begun, fought in rat- infested trenches and battle-scarred landscapes, where, amidst skeletal trees and the bleak, shell-shocked earth, bodies lay dead and dying. Their chance to fulfil their potential had been cruelly and prematurely extinguished. In subsequent conflicts many millions of young servicemen and women died selflessly serving their countries, allowing successive generations the freedoms they themselves would never experience.
Remembrance Day is one brief moment in our calendar year when we can salute and pay homage to so many brave souls who made the ultimate sacrifice to preserve our cherished freedoms and rights. It is a time when, irrespective of our nationality, colour or creed, we can unite in remembering those who have fallen.
On November 11th, I will certainly be wearing my poppy with pride and leading a memorial service at my school library. I feel strongly that we have a moral obligation to instil in the young a sense of gratitude and appreciation that is duly owed to our fallen heroes.
‘If ye break faith with us who die, we shall not sleep, though poppies grow, in Flanders fields.’ John McCrae (1872-1918)
World War II Flying Stories is available now from all major retailers.
