Imagine! Thanks to John Lennon

Time to Imagine

This is the time of year when the famous song by John - "Imagine" - comes to mind for me.

If you listen carefully to the lyrics, it is all about a utopia that we will probably never reach. Would that we could. However with Remembrance Day looming, I always end up imagining other things - things that DID happen and were a long way from utopia. Things I hope I will never experience and by sheer luck so far have not. As a senior well north of 55, I don't imagine I ever will.

Imagine living your life as a young man or woman and looking forward to your future for which you might have worked so hard and of which you dreamt so often. Suddenly you are on a ship or plane bound for destinations unknown but duty bound to kill other people who threaten that future any way you can, or to sacrifice your own life and that future trying.

Imagine being terrified beyond description but having to maintain a brave face with your peers while knowing that you might very well not return. You might end up buried under a simple cross as an unknown soldier because when you died you were no longer recognizable.

Imagine having to shoot someone with the same aspirations as you or slice their throat or gut them or blow them up with a grenade because you are duty bound to do so. There is also this - if you don't they will.

Imagine making friends with another frightened soul and charging into battle facing bullets and explosions only to see them blown to bits and wondering why them and not you? Or wondering if your time is only seconds away. Will it be sudden and merciful or slow and agonizing?

Imagine thinking that you might never see your loved ones again and that, if defeated, the sacrifice would be for nought.

Imagine living in the ground in filthy freezing conditions knowing that if you raise your head too high you might lose it. You stink. You are covered in lice. The "food" if you have any, is terrible. Nature calling? There is only that pit at the end of the trench. To find it just follow your nose.

Imagine spending months learning how to fly so you can deliver weapons that will devastate hundreds of people who are totally innocent and structures that are historic.  Or training as a sailor so you can sink another ship and know that hundreds of people will drown in horror as a result.

Imagine such training going to waste because your plane is fishtailing at full speed towards the ground and these are your last seconds alive. Or you are the sailor whose ship is headed for the bottom with you in it.

Imagine the joy of just returning alive. Let us remember those who did.

Let us imagine it never happening again.

Thank you, John Lennon


The Brewster