Too Many

 It's amazing what you don't see when you are looking around.

I walk by this memorial almost every day and only just realized it is another one with the top sheared off, often indicating a life cut short.

I checked out the plaque and, unfortunately, that was the case.

Here is the inscription:

"In loving memory Joseph Tackleberry Walker, Lieutenant, 58th battalion cef,  third son of Frederick Walker who fell at the Battle of the Somme, France while leading a bombing attack, September 20th 1916, age 28 years, 3 days"

A short five months after the subject of Monday's post, Lieutenant Clifton Horsey, age 26, died in France.

Too many young lives cut short. But their sacrifices are long lived.

As long as we continue to value the freedoms their sacrifices brought. 

But today, I don't know.

As has been said many times the greatest generation consisted of 18 year old kids storming the beaches at Normandy. And now, a few generations later, some 18-year-old kids want to hide in safe rooms when they hear words that hurt their feelings. 

I would think they would be well served by reading the following poem, written by Canadian soldier, surgeon and poet John McCrae in 1915.

This has always been a favourite poem of mine, as it was also one of my mother's favourites.

Why?

She was born in 1915 and went to the same Guelph high school as John McCrae, where by the time she was in high school he was a treasured alumni.  He died in 1918, during WWI in France.

Read that poem again.

Read it to your kids.