Kitchener Soldier Killed

Here is an update from the Record

http://news.therecord.com/News/Local/article/696807

At the Rembrance Day ceremony right after 9/11, I looked at the young cadets guarding the memorial and shivered because I knew that one day we would have local soldiers honoured again at Remembrance day. There are now two, one a soldier from Cambridge killed in an accident, now this soldier killed on patrol. Before 9/11, we remembered the soldiers from the World Wars, and Korea mostly and there was not the emphasis on “support the troops”  or even the vets as there is now.

Before 9/11, I always lay the wreath for the school board and then the Region because, frankly, at that time, no one was interested in it after Elizabeth Witmer and Dianne Stickney left the school board. I’m glad so many people now come out for the ceremony.

I do it because my Dad who died when I was 21, was decorated with the British Empire Medal for his war service and I always think of him and my father-in-law on Remembrance Day.

 All the neglect changed with 9/11 and then Afghanistan. Now the war has finally come home, as I feared.

Should we be in Afghanistan? A talk at the Zonta dinner by a reporter for the Globe and Mail said yes and so do the soldiers we have there. I worry about the women of Afghanistan and the reporter said most of the people there want us there.

But as our soldiers are killed, people are remembering what they say about Afghanistan. It is “the graveyard of Empires.”