Letter of the Day | Saluting the veterans of the World Wars
Published:Saturday | November 12, 2022 | 12:06 AM
THE EDITOR, Sir:
We join with nations around the world in observance of November 11, recognised as Remembrance Day – a day of tribute to veterans of World Wars (WW) I and II.
The people of the parish of Manchester salute its veterans, who served along with other Jamaicans. Among those who survived was Norman Washington Manley, who was born in the community of Roxborough and whose contribution to modern Jamaica is duly recorded.
However, thousands of families lost their loved ones who never returned and whose bodies were buried elsewhere in foreign lands.
In Wimereux communal cemetery, WW I Commonwealth cemetery, France, is the grave of Serjeant Alan Florizel Sampson (b.1897), from the British West Indies Regiment, who died in 1917. The Star of David on his grave is testimony to his Jewish faith and heritage. The soldier was awarded two medals for bravery. He was the son of David Emanual Sampson from Alligator Pond, Manchester, and Eva Cohen D’Azevedo of Kingston.
Human beings as political animals are the progenitors of warfare. John Warry in Warfare in the Classical World, penned an eternal truth that “in the history of warfare, political circumstances determine the combatants or, according to the well-known dictum of Clausewitz, ‘war is nothing but a continuation of political intercourse with an admixture of different means’.” This principle is evident in the current Ukraine Russian war and the potential warfare between China and Taiwan, and that of North and South Korea.
As we remember the millions of people who were sacrificed because of continuation of “political intercourse with an admixture of different means”, we know that the greatest obstacle to peace, in particular universal peace, is the human heart and tongue. Our capacity and intentionality in taming these will further humans as having or showing compassion or ‘benevolence evolving creatures’ embracing human rights.
‘Their Name Liveth Forevermore’.
May we never give up our quest for peace.
DUDLEY MCLEAN II
Mandeville, Manchester