Often, I receive e-mail from people looking for the numbers relating to war. How many were killed in the First World War? How many were killed in the second?
I usually write them back and let them know that I don't know. That I don't care to know. Does this mean that I am ungrateful? No. It's just the sheer immensity of the numbers renders them meaningless. Incomprehensible.
But we do understand how many one is. Every person that was killed or hurt by war was one. And it's the only number that you need to know. Each who have died were mothers, fathers, sons and daughters, brothers and sisters.
They were people no different than you and me with the same dreams, the same desires and the same sense of being. What they gave is a chance to live life to the fullest and to live it completely.
In the following links you will find some beautiful artwork and notes by nurses and soldiers who were convalescing in an infirmary in England during the First World War. I use these wonderful pictures to remind me of the individuality of war. I hope that you can too.
So when the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month roles around and you know that a long time ago many people gave everything so that you would have a chance at something, stop for a moment and think:
How can we measure their sacrifice? We can't.
How can we ever hope to thank them? We can remember them. Every one of them.