There is an awful irony in remembrance of wars. We choose the wars we want to remember. Maybe it is a function of the changing culture in the west or maybe the emergence of media but we make a huge thing of the second world war, and the first world war, but we make nothing of the Napoleonic wars. If we had tried to remember the sacrifices of that war and the fact that the Prussians were central to the victory at Waterloo and been fair to them, then the succeeding wars might not have happened.
After all 50% of the male fighting age population died or were wounded in the years of Napoleon – as a percentage of the population that is more than the two world wars combined.
Even remembrance is a political not a commemorative act.
#dday