h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

These last months I have been particularly interested in the Napoleontic wars and the first world war (1914-1918).

I learned a lot of facts and became more and more aware of how bloody, cruel, and destructive war is. How absurd war can be.

There is one picture however, that nestled in my mind and it was like this.

There was a battle in the South Pacific Sea and a (German or British) ship was hit fatally. It turned upside down and from a distance
you could see young boys in uniforms run over the bottom of their ship.
As a group, they moved like a snake over that last footing, to avoid the big sea waves that partially flooded the bottom of their warship.

The bottomless tragedy of these young boys - children - will remain in my conscious as long as a live. I had seen something that cannot be unseen anymore.

Most of us realize the tragedy of girls and women in a male dominant society. And it truely is a great tragedy.

But there is also a "tragedy of boys".
And this is an example of it.

These were our children.
Millions of these boys died and were wounded in many, many wars,
created by "the adults" in their societies.

I am glad there is a place like H2G2 to write that down.

and thanks for doing so.

Today it is October 21 2005.

Great Britain commemorates and honours their great admiral Nelson.
They celebrate the victory at Trafalgar and they have good reason to do so.

But my heart was unexpectedly uplifted, when I saw at BBC 2, that in Trafalgar áll soldiers, from áll nations that were involved in that battle, were commemorated.

Five thousand bodies still lay at the bottom of the sea, for 200 years. (Of course these dead should remain there in sea.) Bodies of young boys from different nations

Thát specific and collective commemoration is a real step forward.