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Originally Posted by Elfin
V.E day, this year , will always remain etched in my memory. Across the road every household had hung bunting in their windows and across fences. And from somewhere close by a very loudspeaker was playing all of the wartime songs, all day long. Yet there were no other celebrations to be seen. No street parties. No voices could be heard, save for the songs . I went outside several times to listen to the music. Not a single person to be seen all day long because of lockdown. The town like a ghost town... No people, no traffic , just the bunting blowing gently in the breeze and the haunting sound of the war songs. It made the occasion so much more poingent and very very fitting . All in all it was quite beautiful.
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It sounds very beautiful. Is it not both perplexing and amazing how such feelings of beauty can arise from remembering such horror, misery, loss and grief? It seems everybody who experiences war, whether on or off the battlefield, is changed by it in some way, yet none in exactly the same way.
I always remember this quote featured in the Ken Burns documentary series on the U.S. Civil War.
“We have shared the incommunicable experience of war, we have felt, we still feel, the passion of life to its top. In our youth our hearts were touched with fire.” ― Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
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