Eloqua Blog · Personal
Eloqua Contractor Personal: Memorial Day
A personal reflection on service, Remembrance, Memorial Day and the friends who did not come home.
📅 First published: Jun 3, 2021
⏱ Reading time: 4 minutes • 👤 Author: Greg Staunton • 🎯 Focus: Memorial Day, remembrance, service, personal history
Memorial Day is not Veterans Day and it is not a celebration. It is a solemn day to think about the cost of freedom and those who did not come home.
Tamra Bolton
I was not always an Eloqua and Salesforce developer and consultant. I left school early at 17 and joined the army, specifically the infantry. Over the last 23 years I have been in and out of the army three times.
The first time around, I spent two years in Northern Ireland, some of it before the ceasefire, predominantly dealing with public order. When rioting became too much for the police, we would go in and sort out the problem. I was then stationed in London as a guardsman. Yes, I had a bearskin hat. Yes, I spent my 21st birthday on Queen's Guard at Buckingham Palace. Yes, I trooped the colour. And yes, it is hard work. I finished that period of service in Kenya.
The second time around, I was remobilized to go to Iraq. I did convoy protection back and forth down to Safwan, Kuwait, worked in a prison and carried out local area patrols to protect our base.
The third time around, I was remobilized to Afghanistan. I was a frontline machine gunner down in Helmand province on the Pakistan border, living on a frontline position with helicopter resupply every three days for rations, water and ammunition, and no running water or electricity.
Where we operated, 1 in 28 got killed, 1 in 9 got blown up losing limbs and 1 in 5 got shot. It was a hard area to work. I lost a number of friends who I had grown up with in that war.
Remembrance Day And Memorial Day
In Britain we have Remembrance Day on the same date as Veterans Day in the USA. It falls on 11 November to mark the armistice signed between the Allies of World War I and Germany at Compiègne, France, for the cessation of hostilities on the Western Front.
The guns fell silent at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month in 1918. Since then, every year at 11am on the 11th day of the 11th month, people in the UK stand still and fall silent to remember the self-sacrifice that many brave men and women gave in order for us to be free.
Last Remembrance Day my old school asked me to deliver the sermon during the church service. Below is the video with the speech I gave.
Remembering Friends
Fell 18 February 2010
Fell 1 August 2010
Fell 21 July 2010
Fell 31 March 2011
When you go home, tell them of us and say, for your tomorrow, we gave our today.
John Maxwell Edmonds