Christine Stovell, author and freelance writer, on living and writing in West Wales
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Remembering
This war memorial at Aberbanc is one we pass regularly. Standing alone and in the midst of such
beauty, it never fails to remind me of the sacrifice made by just one small village
in west Wales.
Such memorials are very poignant, aren't they? We have one very similar here, although it is in the centre of town. What is the soldier thinking? .....that old lie, dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.
I always get tears in my eyes at the two minute silence. My grandfather came back from the Somme, he was one of the lucky ones, and my dad was too young to fight in the Second World War, so I can only imagine what it must have been like for the families of those whose loved ones never came back.
I don't have any loved ones that have served, yet I always get emotional and teary eyed when I think/read/see about veterans and casualties, irregardless of which nationality and which war they have served. When I think of all the lives and the human potential lost to the world, it makes immensely sad.
While theoretically, we all study and read about these wars, it isn't until we actually see the memorials or the battlefields, that the reality hits us. And days of remembrance reinforce those monuments and memorials in the collective population.
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While theoretically, we all study and read about these wars, it isn't until we actually see the memorials or the battlefields, that the reality hits us. And days of remembrance reinforce those monuments and memorials in the collective population.