Tonight I’ll be adding my wee tinny tribute to the NHS and care staff, acutely aware that what they actually need is a decent income and proper protection.
But they’re going above and beyond right now, in a crisis which is all too current.
Tomorrow I won’t be singing 'We’ll Meet Again', or listening to a crackly broadcast of Churchillian rhetoric.
That conflict was 75 years ago, and only a few veterans like the remarkable Captain – now honorary Colonel – Tom Moore have any personal memories to share.
Not that many veterans ever much did.
The people who have seen war at first hand are rarely in the business of glorifying it. They know only too well what carnage and sacrifice look like – they know that wars, any wars, are full of needless loss and horrendous suffering.
READ MORE: Sirens and searchlights at Faslane set to mark 75th anniversary of VE Day
The endless nostalgia fest attached to a conflict which ended before the middle of the 20th century is misplaced and self serving, especially when it’s attached to political issues like Brexit by men who have never fired a shot in anger. Or taken a bullet.
They have no business marketising other people’s sacrifices. Honouring those who gave their lives, and those whom they left bereft and bereaved, is not about the faux patriotism of jolly sing-alongs or flag waving.
A more appropriate response to VE Day is surely quiet reflection of the massive losses encountered on all sides, not least among the civilian populations.
Whilst we rightly condemn the rise of brutal Nazism, let’s remember, too, that we chose to bomb highly populated German cities in order to reduce morale.
I think we can safely say being incinerated is not a morale booster. Just as it wasn’t underneath a barrage in Clydebank or London’s East End.
READ MORE: No public holiday in Argyll and Bute for VE Day's 75th anniversary
A more useful contemplation is the thought that, although conflicts persist in all their harrowing waste throughout the world, Europe has enjoyed 75 years of peaceful co-existence.
This last week, Europeans joined in a conference, jointly hosted by the UK government, to mount a global search for the vaccine which may liberate us all from the very real battle which has engulfed the world, regardless of politics or ideology.
This is the only war which matters now. And to wallow in the much-revised history of what happened during six years of the mid 20th century is hardly the most effective response to it.
My father was in the war. Two of my mother’s brothers fought through the North African campaign. Another was in the Air Force.
Were they still alive, I doubt they’d imagine for a moment that they gave up years of their lives so that their heirs could dwell perennially in someone else’s past.
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