Dear LPG

I don’t mean to help to start anyone’s day in a negative way but I would like to focus in on one of those bits of street paraphernalia which we can all point out if needed but so often take for granted these days. 

I recently found myself using the Lewisham one as a point of reference when trying to help a person that stopped me in the street while asking for directions, which is quite sad if it is the only time that you remember that it is there.    

I read an article last Remembrance Day which got me thinking of another aspect of remembering.  It is now quite rare for people to take the time to remember our war casualties and perhaps that is because our busy lives leave us with so little time for anything outside our usual routines. 

We all hear about the ongoing wars on the news but, there are now relatively few people alive in England who have a real recollection of what it is like to have lived in a war zone unless they have arrived from somewhere else where there is conflict.   As the geographical and historical connections make it harder for us older members of society to have any idea of what the realities of life during war was like, it has to be even further from the minds of the younger ones.  

Every week I travel to Kent and spend the day looking after my four-year-old Grandson.  Our routine takes us past his local war memorial and he likes to walk on the brick wall near it.  We stopped one day and I mentioned the reason that it is there.  Now, as we get to the memorial and see the names, we sometimes think about all the military and ordinary people who have fought for the life we have today, they are acknowledged and questions consistent with the interest of a four-year-old get asked, including why we stand silent for two minutes once a year.  

He must have mentioned it to his parents, my son and his wife, because it came up during a conversation with them recently.  So perhaps it is up to us to help when it comes to filling in the gaps of knowledge which will keep the future generations acknowledging some aspects of the past.  

I know it is a really idealistic notion, and I know it will not happen in my life time, but I still live in hope that there will be a time when the entire world will be at peace.  For so many war can so often be something that we see on the television news because it is happening to someone else somewhere else but perhaps our young people need our help if we are to continue to remember.

It doesn’t have to be Remembrance day, perhaps a little reminder as we pass one of the many street memorials is a way forward. 

HG, Charlton

HG offers a little information about such memorials in the UK and around the world…

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