We Remember Them

Today is a day of remembrance. For all those brave men and women around the world who wear their uniforms, and for those who wore them before our time.

We remember them. All of them.

We remember their sacrifices for our freedom so that we can live in peace. Even now we live in turbulent times, where wars and conflict rage in our world.

Did we not learn from those before us?

Did we not read about their suffering?

Today, we think of those who are fighting wars right now. For those who are fighting for their countries in the Ukraine and in the Middle East.

We must stop all wars and look to our not so distant past where not just one but two horrific world wars affected humanity all over the world.

So much suffering. So much pain.

We should not remember their sacrifice in vain.

When I look back at generations before me.

I see a world wasting much of human dignity.

Nations fighting bloodied wars.

The world shaking at its core.

Our world is troubled right now.

We still fight in conflicts somehow.

We still need each other to survive.

Foreign or domestic, we mourn those who died.

When do we stop and learn from our past?

What is our human future forecast?

A poem by Lizzy Woods

Right now, schools are teaching the next generation about the world wars because they are now out of living memory. But many families still remember a loved one who was either in the war or affected by the war back home.

Many movies have been made about the wars so that we can feel how harrowing it was to live in war torn countries. There are hundreds of books and poems written by people who survived the world wars.

Can we understand the suffering and sacrifices they went through?

We watched a clip from "Band of Brothers" with our students. It's an American war drama mini series that was released in 2001. In the series, we follow the men of Easy company that fought in world war 2. The series was based on the book with the same name by historian Stephen E. Ambrose's from 1992.

What struck me the most when I watched the whole miniseries was the real accounts by the soldiers that the actors portrayed. All of them are now dead, but their legacy is real. We can watch the mini series and hear the real soldiers being interviewed at the end. Their first hand accounts of lived experience.

Band of Brothers link: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0185906/

It doesn't get more real than this.

Real soldiers, telling their story with their personal experiences, portrayed by the actors who were guided by them. We remember them and their sacrifice in world war 2.

We remember the times when food was scarce during the world wars. When everyone had to work together to survive. For the women who stepped up and took on the work in factories. For the farmers who made food for everyone. Almost every family around the world was affected by the world wars in some way. No one benefitted from the wars.

Yet here we are, in 2026 still fighting in the world.

Here are some poems written by the soldiers who fought in the first world war. A war that took so many needless lives in the most harrowing way. Reading these poems shine a light of a world torn apart by war and suffering.

I wish the fighting would stop.

I wish humans would learn there is nothing to gain from killing and destroying infrastructure in vain.

My name is Lizzy. I’m a trauma survivor, a wife, a mom, a teacher, and an author.

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Here are four world war 1 poems that speak to me on this day.

We must remember, always.

In Flanders Fields

By Col. John McCrae

In Flanders fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row,

    That mark our place; and in the sky

    The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

    Loved and were loved, and now we lie,

        In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:

To you from failing hands we throw

    The torch; be yours to hold it high.

    If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

        In Flanders fields.

The Soldier

By Rupert Brooke

If I should die, think only this of me:

      That there’s some corner of a foreign field

That is for ever England. There shall be

      In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;

A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,

      Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam;

A body of England’s, breathing English air,

      Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.

And think, this heart, all evil shed away,

      A pulse in the eternal mind, no less

            Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;

Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;

      And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,

            In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.

Anthem for Doomed Youth

by Wilfred Owen, 1917.

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells,
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs, -
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.

What candles may be held to speed them all?
Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes.

Attack

By Siegfried Sassoon

At dawn the ridge emerges massed and dun 

In the wild purple of the glow'ring sun, 

Smouldering through spouts of drifting smoke that shroud 

The menacing scarred slope; and, one by one, 

Tanks creep and topple forward to the wire. 

The barrage roars and lifts. Then, clumsily bowed 

With bombs and guns and shovels and battle-gear, 

Men jostle and climb to meet the bristling fire. 

Lines of grey, muttering faces, masked with fear, 

They leave their trenches, going over the top, 

While time ticks blank and busy on their wrists, 

And hope, with furtive eyes and grappling fists, 

Flounders in mud. O Jesu, make it stop!

The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;

Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,

And each slow dusk a drawing down of blinds.

All Poems are from The Poetry Foundation

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/