UKRAINE

How Many “Countless White Crosses” Must “Stand Mute In The Sand” Before We Embrace Peace?

A song written about WWI is playing out in Ukraine

When Singer-Songwriter Eric Bogle visited France he was shocked when he witnessed the fields of “endless white crosses” before his eyes.

Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime. — Ernest Hemingway, 1946

What he saw was the sea of graves commemorating the “great fallen in 1916” from WWI, moving him to write a song — The Green Fields of France.

When I think of Ukraine today, the words of The Green Fields of France repeat in my mind, verses Bogle composed 50 years ago:

“Did you leave there a wife or a sweetheart behind In some faithful heart is your memory enshrined? Although you died back in 1916 In that faithful heart are you forever 19

Or are you a stranger without even a name Enclosed in forever behind a glass frame In an old photograph, torn, battered and stained Faded to yellow in a brown leather frame”

Bogle’s lyrics convey the human tragedy that unfolded more than a century ago, in the hope that future generations will remember and learn from the mistakes of the past.

I can’t even image how mind-numbingly painful the loss of life was for the people who lived through the first World War.

Ukraine

Tania’s article paints a painful story, describing how her Mother stayed in the besieged city of Mariupol to care for her 90-year old Grandfather — a heart-wrenching piece that I read on the eve of Mother’s day.

“I Don’t Know if I’ll Hear From Them Again“— Tania Rak

I can’t even begin to image the devastation that has befallen the people of Ukraine, families like Tania’s and Anastasiia’s, who describes in depth the Assassination “of the Mind” in her article about how “Russia Is Trying to Destroy Ukrainian Culture” for years.

The age-old cliche that “History has a tendency to repeat itself” indicates one thing — a defect in the Human race’s inability to learn from the past.

Regrettably, we haven’t learned anything, as millions of Ukrainians queue at borders to cross into a future unknown.

Past Lessons Lost

Over 100 nationalities took part in WWI in some shape or form in a conflict that mobilized 70 million military personnel, resulting in the loss of 20 million lives at a time when the Global population was 1.8 Billion.

Lessons ignored are lost to the annals of History books!

By not learning from the past we are failing the 20 million people who died during WW1, and the 70–85 million people who perished in WWII — 3% of the 2.3 Billion Global population in 1940.

The Future

Reports of residential buildings being bombed at the start of the conflict was described as genocide by some. When Maternity Hospitals soon suffered the same fate, we now know this to be true — beyond any doubt.

A truly appalling atrocity.

War denies the unborn generation the gift of life.

The World Health Organisation has “documented evidence of at least 31 such attacks on health facilities”, including maternity hospitals, defined by Sajid Javid as “war crimes” and “rising daily.”

From 1914 to 1918 the number of unborn in Germany and France alone was estimated to be 4.5 million.

Millions of are being forced to leave Ukraine, including the unborn.

Thousands have been killed and wounded.

Those who stay behind face death in a warzone imposed on them by one country, one person rather, a Billionaire aggressor now targeting civilians, a despicable escalation to lure others to partake in his destructive ambition.

NATO stands by, behind rhetoric, ignoring lessons past.

The Global population is 7.9 Billion today, 4 times that of 1918.

Yet the World stands by.

Fields of Ukraine

The Green Fields of Ukraine fed Europe for decades. Yet food shortages of war means that people are going hungry right now — starving — in the land known as “the breadbasket of Europe”

Yet the World stands by.

Economic sanctions nor millions of munitions will stop an autocratic leader like Putin, a lesson we learned in WWII.

Any leader who shows “blind indifference” towards fellow humans has no consideration for a “generation” who face being “butchered and damned.”

Hope, pray, fear

I hope for Ukraine.

I pray for Ukraine.

I fear the scale of destruction that Eric Bogle saw in France, “torn between anger and sadness at the young lives lost”, is being rewritten.

“The sun, now it shines on the green fields of France There’s a warm Summer breeze that makes the red poppies dance Ah look how the Sun shines from under the clouds There’s no gas, no barbed wire, there’s no gun-firing now

But here in this graveyard it’s still no Man’s land The countless white crosses stand mute in the sand To man’s blind indifference to his fellow man To a whole generation who were butchered and damned”

— Eric Bogle

So how many more “White Crosses” does the world need to “Stand Mute In The Sand” before we restore peace.