Sunday 11 November 2012

Remembering Those Who Fought


My Uncle George landed at Normandy. He didn't like to talk about it much but he did once and he had this to say: "It was hell. You just had to keep running while your buddies were being blown up around you." Hell isn't a big enough word.

I was working at a small rural hospital in Alberta a couple of years ago and had the enormous privilege of speaking to one of the only remaining Spitfire pilots alive. A British gentleman, I tentatively asked him about his wartime experience one day when he was seated in the lounge. He told me this: "When you are twenty two years old and you are at the end of the runway ready to throttle up your fighter and you know that you are either going to kill another young man like yourself or die yourself, well, it changes you."

I was very proud to have spoken to him and I told him, "We owe you everything." And he said, "You really do you know, they came awful close to winning. Can you imagine that world?"

He died a few weeks later. At his funeral one of the few airworthy Spitfires flew overhead.

So, I would ask that when an elderly person in front of you is not moving fast enough at the check out counter or through that door you're trying to get through, remember this: years back they may have run into the line of fire for you. They saved our world. Your world.