{"id":4824,"date":"2017-11-11T01:47:02","date_gmt":"2017-11-11T09:47:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/?p=4824"},"modified":"2017-11-11T08:00:03","modified_gmt":"2017-11-11T16:00:03","slug":"larks-poppies-at-sea-11112017","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/?p=4824","title":{"rendered":"Larks & Poppies \u2013 At Sea \u2013 [11\/11\/2017]"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"The air of suspicion, the voice of betrayal, the steel of oppression the blood that is shed. The smell of the gun smoke, the shock of the bomb blast, the cry of the wounded, the smell of the dead. And here we are gathered the only survivors, and we are rewarded with tatters and stains, we search through the rubble for faces of loved ones, for anything living but nothing remains\u2026 <\/em> And who are the lucky? The ones who survived? Or the ones who are no more? And who are the winners, and who are the losers? And what was it all for?<\/strong> ~ Spirit of A Nation<\/em><\/p>\n

As the years keep going on in their stately march, I find myself getting angrier, or perhaps I\u2019m still just confused. I don\u2019t understand, I don\u2019t know why we don\u2019t get it\u2026and why every time we come close, every time someone throws down their arms and says \u201cno more\u201d someone comes along and forces them to do it anyway\u2026<\/p>\n

And so it is that I end up standing in dress uniform in the showroom once more, weeping for those whose names I do not know, with a grief I do not understand and never have since I was a child. Feeling more like the lark in John McClain\u2019s poem than anything else \u2013 trying to bring some light to a world that seems so determined to fill itself with darkness.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s difficult to find another way to say it, I say the same thing every year, and every year it makes no difference. Or at least it seems to make none.<\/p>\n

But today, standing there in my dress uniform, I found myself thinking more than ever of my Gran. Every season people stand up in front of the stage and name people they are standing for, every year I think that I should get up there and say something for Gran \u2013 who served, in her own way, in both wars and lived through so much more than that. I wish I could find the courage to stand up there and name her, and say how much I wished that I had listened<\/em> to her more.<\/p>\n

I do not understand. I do not understand any of it. It was my Gran that took me to my first cenotaph, who taught me what to feel, what to say, long before I ever really knew what it was about. I stood there in my shiney slick party shoes, cold and miserable, not having any idea really what I was standing there for. But we went, none the less, and now I go every year, for her really. For my Gran. And for all the other people like her, who remember what this is really supposed to be about.<\/p>\n

It is neither sweet nor honorable to die for one\u2019s country, it is not honorable to be sent to sacrifice yourself to the profit of another. That\u2019s all war has been about, ever, it\u2019s not about bravery, or justice,e or honor, it\u2019s about profit. It\u2019s about one institution throwing lives away to prove that they are better than another institution. And we shall never end war by pretending that it’s about anything else…<\/p>\n

Until we figure that out, people like me, I suppose, just get to stand there being impotently furious at the whole institution, and being painfully confused, because deep down we are still a child standing in the mud\u2026and no one can explain to us why\u2026<\/p>\n

\u201cLook at them, they ARE us\u2026\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The air of suspicion, the voice of betrayal, the steel of oppression the blood that is shed. The smell of the gun smoke, the shock of the bomb blast, the cry of the wounded, the smell of the dead. And … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4824","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reflections-below-the-waterline"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3GtNE-1fO","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4824","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4824"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4824\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4827,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4824\/revisions\/4827"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4824"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4824"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4824"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}