Many of my male relatives, both currently and from the past, have played a role in the armed forces. I am proud of my cousin who is currently serving as well as my many great-uncles who fought in the Korean War. My Grand-dad was a Merchant Seaman for the Canadian Forces and when my Grand-dad and Great-Uncle Tom on my Dad's side fought for England, they were captured by the enemy and became POWs during WW2. I am thankful that both were eventually able to return home. The world looked at war differently then; it was considered exciting to join and fight for your country and many young men even lied about their age to get the opportunity to go overseas.
In grade 7, we have been reading the "Rememberance Times", a magazine about Canada's role in war and peace-keeping. The class was told to go through the many interesting articles and then pick out and write down ten interesting facts about the many wars and peace-keeping missions we have been involved in.
Next, each student had to create a character from WW2 who would write a letter from that time period. The character could either be someone from home, a mom, sister, factory worker etc., or someone overseas, a nurse, soldier, pilot, or other person serving. After creating a profile for their character - things like age, job, family background - students became their character and, using some of the facts found from the articles, are now in the process of writing a one page letter to someone - those overseas would write home and those at home would write overseas.
It is so difficult for us to comprehend what it was like to be so far from home for perhaps years at a time, all to help millions of people we didn't know. And yet, over the years, hundreds of thousands have done just that. I hope that through this exercise, we will continue to learn from our past. Lest we forget...
