A veteran pays their respects during a Remembrance Sunday ceremony at the Royal Artillery War Memorial in Hyde Park Corner, in London on 8 November 2020. Picture: DANIEL LEAL-OLIVAS / AFP
On 28 January 1970, an incredibly tragic accident occurred. Known as the Daleside tragedy, 23 Henley on Klip schoolchildren were killed when a train hit their bus. There is a tremendous story of bravery too in a matric who gave his own life to help younger children get off the bus.
The local community would have annual services at the memorial. However, in 2020, 50 years after the accident, they made the conscious decision to not do it anymore.
Sitting at my school’s Remembrance Day service with a poppy on my lapel, I figured that this tradition has been going on quite long. Few people living have any memory of World War II and the Armistice Day remembrance services have been going on since the end of World War I.
So, what’s the point? How can we remember what we never knew?
Some schools have even called off this tradition, citing it as a glamourisation of war. Even if that were the case, and I don’t believe it is, it’s a silly reason to not remember and reflect on the people who gave their lives for us.
Nobody is claiming that recognising the class 1976, with a public holiday even, is a glamorisation of protest. You might be reading this in German were it not for fallen soldiers.
Let’s be honest though, I tend to write a lot about government failures, so you’d probably not read this at all since I’d likely either be in a cell or in a box.
Some institutions have, correctly, modernised their services to give recognition beyond the two world wars. It shouldn’t take a third one to maintain our understanding of why we have what we have.
It’s not perfect, sure. It’s also not as bad as what it would otherwise be. As awful as war is, many of our freedoms, rights and ways of life are a result of wars.
It’s difficult to comprehend since wars these days are fought with jets, drones and remote attacks. One can hardly begin to imagine the idea of going to a foreign territory, aiming your scope at another person and pulling the trigger.
Not only is there an emotional hardship following doing that on repeat if you survive, there’s also the very real probability that you would not survive.
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Even if you watch all the movies, the idea of the D-Day landings is incomprehensible. Tell yourself you believe in your cause so much that you’d get on a ship, armed with a couple of rations and a rifle and take on an overwhelming military power. Most of us are too fearful to even get lost in a bad part of town.
Yes, wars are behind us. Yes, the world wars were long ago. Yes, many of the people who ever knew the fallen have fallen themselves. That doesn’t make the modern Remembrance Day any less valid. It doesn’t make the ceremony invalid.
If anything, it challenges us to think about why we have what we have and what it took to get it. It challenges us to realise the importance of what we have to those who fought for is so that we wouldn’t have to.
It may seem like a silly idea to many and that is because many haven’t been in war. Many of us haven’t even been exposed to war, at least not directly.
So surely it would make sense to honour the people who gave their lives so that we wouldn’t have to?
The community of Daleside may have stopped their formal commemorations for their own reasons. They may be equally tragic, but a bus accident is not a war. Both involve loss, but a war is a voluntary loss in the pursuit of something bigger; something important. That is something that we are living with now.
So, no matter how long we keep enjoying the spoils of bloody victories, it makes sense to remember those who spilled their blood.
We will remember them.
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