PAUL CLARK says it’s the fact that some have to forget that makes it our duty to remember…
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LEST WE FORGET: The cemetery next to the Australian National Memorial at Villers-Bretonneux in the Somme in France. PICTURE: David Adams “If we don’t hear eyewitness accounts, we won’t realise what those in the past went through and gave. We won’t remember the horrors of war, and we will be in danger of too easily walking back into them.”
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‘Lest we forget’ is a key phrase of this Anzac season. 100 years on from Gallipoli, and with a world in growing turmoil, it seems especially apt. But one war veteran I knew, who has sadly passed away, remarked about his war service, “lest we remember, lest we remember”.
I asked him why he didn’t want to remember.
He shared with me that, despite seeing little combat himself, he saw much horror, he saw much inhumanity, and he lost many friends. The world was so changed for him through World War II, that soon after returning home, he emigrated from Canada to Australia. In this new land there was no expectation that life would be the same, so it was easier to adjust.
Hence Bill, my veteran friend, wanted to say, “lest we remember”. He didn’t want to remember the horrors of war. He didn’t want to remember the things he saw. He didn’t want to contemplate those friends’ lives cut desperately short. And I don’t blame him. I don’t blame him at all.
For those of us who have never experienced the ravages of war, except through the safety of our TV or the delusion of computer games, we have to remember, we need to remember. I think we need to do more than that, we need to find our ‘Bill’ – our past or present soldier – and genuinely ask them what their experience was like. Don’t badger them, let them share on their terms, but demonstrate to them that what they offer you is a sacred gift.
If we don’t hear eyewitness accounts, we won’t realise what those in the past went through and gave. We won’t
remember the horrors of war, and we will be in danger of too easily walking back into them.
So I understand our diggers who don’t want to remember, but to the rest of us, ‘Lest we forget’!
