Remember courage and sacrifices, but do not forget about what horror and madness (rather than glory and honor) war most basically is.
It is very appropriate to pay respect to those who risked and lost their lives, but at the same time I think we must guard against allowing this tribute to the veterans to be abused on behalf of a glorification of war. I have known many veterans, talked to many, corresponded with many. They had a lot to tell and there were many different things they could tell me. But in one point they all said the same thing.
War is horrible and must be avoided if it can.
I am very aware that mankind has not yet, and possibly may never reach the state of development where wars may be a matter of the past entirely. But so much has been achieved even in the last two decades. Western Europe with all its civilization was a war ridden part of the world. By now the chances of a war here are about zero and I do hope that such developments may get the chance to expand over the whole world eventually.
We are fascinated by war however (and I confess not to be an exception there). In our movies we often see the brave warriors fighting glorious battles accompanied by lovely music that makes you want to grab a gun and "play along". But war is not a game and none of those who have really seen it will claim it to be. Still we like war so much that many of us would love it to be included in the land before time and I daresay that some people even wish they had "their own war" to fight in gloriously same as those young men in the summer of 1914 did who are today known as the lost generation.
Again I must stress that it is absolutely proper to pay respect to those who risked or sacrificed life and / or health in war and the last thing this post is supposed to be is a slander against the brave men who deserve our respect and often our sympathy.
But during my students exchange (in 2002) I attended a veterans day event which made me feel extremely uneasy. There was a lot of talk about glory, patriotism, honor, and sacrifice, but the sense of war and hope for peace remained unmentioned. A young lady who had definitely never been to a field hospital recited a poem in a tone of deepest conviction. I forgot the exact wording, but the central message was her regret (there was a line "...it makes me me sad, it makes me cry...") about the lack of patriotism and readiness to "fight for our country" in the youth of our time. Nobody there seemed to consider the readiness of "our youth" to question the necessity of a war and the love for peace as a quality rather than the degeneration of a generation as which it was depicted. The group of WW2 veterans who were there did not speak and maybe I was just seeing things, but I had the impression that they didn't feel very easy about the sound of this either.
When thinking of war we tend to think of glorious moments of battle, waving flags, and grand heroics on behalf of a glorious cause. Few people ask about the site of a battle the day after the battle was fought and few really make it clear to themselves that the hand or leg shot to pieces in a few split second lasting movie scene would in real live be maimed for the rest of the life of a person who otherwise might have become a great piano player or skier. The man who is shot in a movie scene lasting a split second would in reality be death ever after. He might have had a wife and children who would never see their father again, and possibly parents who, robbed of the help and assistance their son would have offered to them may have died poor and mostly forgotten. Many who were killed in battle did not die a quick and painless death as we so often see in movies. The last one to die mortally wounded at the battle of Waterloo died in 1817. His jaw had been shot away which made eating almost impossible though he was kept alive with spoons of soup until he gradually starved away in pain two years after the battle was fought.
All these are things that we don't like to think or talk about too much but these are the things which are in dearer need of commemoration than the courage and bravery of which there is a very active culture of memory established already.
Remember war for what it is, not for what we would like it to be.
