Remembrance Day

From 11:11 until 11:12, I paused and thought of fallen comrades and family. I also thought about of the civilians who've died as "collateral damage" in war, or who died at the hand of whatever monster we needed to go out and fight.

I also thought about what that silence means, what it represents. I pictured soldiers, huddled in their cold, wet, smelly trenches, yelling down the line "Shut up! Everyone shut up!", and then just listening. Listening to a sound that some hadn't heard in years.

Silence.

No artillery. No machine guns. No rifle fire. No battle cries and screams of death. Just silence. I can only imagine how it sounded, how it felt. A sound so beautiful, so profoundly sad, that it brought the toughest men in history to tears.

This sound... this Silence, in the end, is what they were fighting for all along. Their gift to us, which we've largely ignored. The Silence that says... screams...

Please...

Never Again.