I Will Wear a Poppy On Remembrance Day

I wore my poppy today. In school year 6 did a service for remembrance. They are younger kids. Ages 10 and 11. I went. It was nearly an hour. Their parents had come and the minister. They sang songs and read poems and we all sang hymns and prayed. And we saw a film that reminded me of Watership Down. The rabbits came into the fields and geese flew overhead but they turned into planes and soon there was gunfire and the sky was lit up by rocket fire and people died and after the poppies grew where there had been bloodshed and mud. And I cried. And although I’m just a Year 13 student, I teach little groups of younger children Maths and one of the boys said, Miss were you crying? They call us Miss even though we’re just students like them. And he said it so nicely. And I said yes. But I saw one of the Year 6 boys on the stage crying too. And outside my classroom there are two display cases. One for each war. They show the names of every person from my village who was killed. Their addresses. Same addresses as we live now. And where they were killed. France, Africa, all over. We just walk past them mostly. But today we stopped and read them. We must never forget. The minister reminded us that though we can walk home safely tonight, the boys and girls in Syria can’t.
Will it end. Can people ever put aside their differences and look after each other? My government tries to keep people out! Why? The people who run my country came from overseas years ago themselves. I’m sorry. I’m about to go on and on. And you don’t want to hear it!