One Day We Shall Understand Anonymous

At the going down of the sun and in the morning, we will remember them.

These words have always held a spiritual quality to me. Something sacred, like a marble statue. And in the gym, when we repeat them, I feel that even with all the sweaty air and basketball nets, we are in a temple.

Which was why I’d always thrown myself into Remembrance Day preparations. I remember how last year, after a month of preparations, we set an eight minute band piece to spoken poetry with lyrics and animations on screen, detailing the perspectives of four individuals affected by the Great War. I carefully composed the meter and asked my vocally-skilled friends to stay back after school, turning the music room turned into a small recording studio. I remember the night before, when I was texting Peter, our technical specialist, feeding him the details of the audio-visual matchup as I frantically edited them.

In the morning, when our part of the assembly finally came, I felt a small sense of pride, that we were able to do this much--to honour those who had given their lives for us.

This summer, I partook in a scholarship battlefield tour, where we stood before the very graves of soldiers, the Christmas Truce Statue, and the gold-strewn Normandy...