To Arms! To Arms!

To my right is a clip from the BBC series "Blackadder Goes Forth."  It's a fairly tongue-in-cheek approach to the beginnings of the war.  I happen to like it, and was thinking about it for something to do with today's post. When searching YouTube for this segment, I couldn't help notice the comments section in which many people admit to being first exposed to this series in history class.

That stopped me in my tracks.  Certainly Blackadder's (Rowan Atkinson) explanation of the genesis of the Great War is fairly correct and entertaining, but lacks a great deal in a complete understanding.  I don't fault the show, as it's intention is to entertain; I find fault with an education system that can't engage students by means other than showing videos from old situation comedies in order to impart the lessons of history.

One thing I run into often enough is people who have no interest in history because it is "boring."  I rail against that.  If I can say so without sounding too vain, I'd like to think I challenge the notion of history being boring twice a week.  Without the study of history, we cannot understand the present.  If we don't "sing our own songs" we loose a sense of who we are as a collective community.

There are hundreds of thousands, if not millions of individual artefacts and remains yet to be recovered from the battlefields of our past; and not nearly enough people to find, preserve and interpret these leavings.  Some risk never being found, others might be destroyed or lost by our present day impact on the surrounding environment.

We've sent young men and women off to war, asked them to do difficult things and put their lives at risk so that we at home can feel safe.  There's an obligation we owe to them, and in my opinion, not enough being done, especially with recent "clawbacks" being discussed.

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I'll leave you all with that for now, and I thank you in advance for your efforts at helping us achieve our goals.  Regular posts will return on Monday, with an update on how well this appeal was received.  If you have any questions, comments or suggestions, please post them to ifyebreakfaith@gmail.com