Honouring Sacrifice
This week, we marked Remembrance Day with a Principal’s Assembly led by our Cadets. It featured this strong speech delivered by CUO Jess (Year 11) that paid tribute to the countless servicemen and women who have made the ultimate sacrifice for our freedom and urged us to deeply appreciate the peace and security we enjoy today. Lest we forget.
Today, we are here to remember. Remembrance is a powerful tool in the reflection and appreciation of sacrifice. We are the future, and we must continue to recognise the hardship that countless soldiers have endured in the past that has allowed us to achieve our current position as a society.
We must consider and recognise the service and selfless behaviour of these brave souls in order to truly acknowledge the peace and security that has been achieved.
Allow me to read you a passage: On any other day, he sits in the nursing home playing checkers, only moving when necessary. His joints ache and his muscles are wasting, he no longer makes so many trips to the gardens. But on the morning of 11 November, he is neatly dressed, with a poppy pinned to his chest. What is left of his silver hair is neatly combed and he grips his walker tightly as he makes his way to the minibus. The care-aid hurries forward with a wheelchair but seeing the look of reproach and hurt in his usually sparkling and friendly eyes, she pretends she was just parking it. He gives her a stiff nod and continues his marathon to the door. He will stand to honour them, the ones who died so brutally in the service of others, until his legs cannot bear his weight. But like him, they are stoic, they don't relish the pain but they endure it without complaint. There are worse things than discomfort. He barely notices the physical pain in his hands and legs, it is the mental anguish that dominates his thoughts.
Remember the soldiers. As a collective, we are able to acknowledge grit, determination and strength, but we should acknowledge all that make up the collective. You may know people, know of people or have known people whose involvement in the service of our country has established our peace. For the others, we may not know their name, their family, their stories, those who they loved and those who loved them. But we must know that they had dimension and they had things and connections that were extraordinarily difficult to farewell.
Let us continue to honour, remember and respect every single one of these people and to appreciate where their sacrifice has positioned us now. In our commemoration of the fallen, we should continue to look to them and their stories for their bravery, resilience and strength.
Lest we forget.