Never ever forget

This photo is of a grave at Normandy in France.

I have been watching some of the events going on in France to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the D-Day landings, and I have sat with tears streaming down my face at the sight of these glorious men and women being brought together to be honoured and remembered.

There will never be an event like it again. Those involved are passing on, and the Normandy Veterans Association is to disband this year as its numbers dwindle.

But may we never forget. May it be seared in our memories year on year. These men and women brought life to words like sacrifice, honour, courage, and bravery in a way that most of us will never know.

And yet how lightly we seem to treat the freedom and democracy that they won for us. When you consider that less than two fifths of those eligible to vote recently even bothered to turn out, you do wonder whether we deserve the sacrifice of these men and women.

I could go on.

I finish with President Obama's words.

"Whenever the world makes you cynical, whenever you doubt that courage and goodness is possible, stop and think of these men. These men waged war so that we might know peace. They sacrificed so that we might be free. They fought in hopes of a day when we'd no longer need to fight.

We are grateful to them."

We will remember them.