Lest We Forget lesson needs more recognition

It was 1 11 days before Remembrance Day when the senior walked into the gas b bar checkout.

The young woman at the cash register smiled and said: “I have to tell y you The you senior are was the first taken person aback. I’ve seen today wearing a poppy.” The young woman, evidently connected to wartime memories, said she had tried to promote poppy sales from the Legion box on the counter.

“You won’t believe what some people say about the Legion,” she ad added.

The senior, a Legion member, was surprised, yet not shocked. Some people have long considered the Legion a hangout for old veterans who drink too much and boast about the good old days.

What those th people with a jaundiced eye towards the Legion and towards veterans forget to ask themselves is why some vets drink.

For many veterans, drinking with others was, is, maintaining a bond forged between military members – a bond only those who have served in war time can understand.

For others, the drinking was an attempt to cope with the horrors of war: body parts and blood flying in the air, fellow friends in the military slowly dying beside them from a bullet wound, rats gnawing on dead bodies… The list of horrors goes on. Some veterans experiencing these mind-numbing graphic realities coped with alcohol.

They suffered from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) before it was recognized as a mental disease caused by witnessing terrible events.

They were told to suck it up and be men when they returned from war. No wonder some used alcohol as a crutch to cope with their gruesome memories.

Nearly four generations after the Second World War the words Lest We Forget and their significance need to be explained more to a public unfamiliar with the realities of war.