DID you listen to the silence? I did.

For the first time in many years, I reflected on the reason for "Remembrance" and what it might mean to me and the many thousands of others who devoted this fractional two minutes of their lives in contemplation.

My own silence was for those who gave everything. It was for those who went to war and did not return, and although I am not old enough to have memories of the first and so-called Great War, my affinities are inexplicably linked to those who fell in that horrendous conflagration.

They who did not grow old, did not know, nor could foresee, the horrors that lay before them as they went willingly forward to join in the carnage that represented war at that time, firmly believing that it was to protect us and save us for a better life than we might enjoy if we were to succumb to the enemy threat.

What thoughts were in the minds of these men as they approached the front line, the evidence of the torment that lay ahead reached them long before they joined the battle as the streams of wounded passed them by, some moaning, some screaming, some quietly sobbing, and worse, the silent ones, not yet dead but close upon it?

What kept them going forward when all around was death and desolation, when friend and fellow soldier at your side, could suddenly be torn apart - thankfully not you - this time?

What kept them going forward? Was it courage; was it fear; was it instinct? We shall never know, but they should be remembered for it. Lest we forget. My silence was also for those who did return, some with their minds understandably shattered, their vacant eyes, hiding even from themselves, the horrors they had witnessed.

We saw the shell-shocked, the mutilated, the disfigured, and the numbers of wheelchairs and crutches on the streets which gave further testimonial to the suffering, and much of this human debris of the conflict was still in evidence as I grew up through the Thirties.

We must remember them, these genuine heroes who came back without "battle syndrome," with no recourse to counselling, no claims of "stress-related" conditions to be evaluated; with no thought of compensation for exposure to gas, for loss of sight, for loss of limb or even loss of sanity. These men would have been insulted at even the suggestion of such a thing.

They did their duty knowing the risk, accepting the meagre pay and also accepting the consequences. Litigation and claims were not in their vocabulary. They only knew courage and dignity.

As I listened to the silence, I thanked God that it was unlikely we would ever be called upon to apply ourselves to a similar challenge again - we no longer have the qualities required, and at the moment, we are even unable to stand up to the French!

KEITH BAKER, Kay Street, Darwen.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.