The Eleventh Of The Eleventh Of The Eleventh

They went with songs to the battle, they were young.

Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted; 

They fell with their faces to the foe.
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old.

Age shall not weary them, nor the years contemn. 

At the going down of the sun, and in the morning,
We will remember them.

For the first time on Armistice Day, there is no one left to grow old, in this country at least. The final World War One veteran living in Britain died earlier this year, and you can count those remaining from that war worldwide on the fingers of one hand. The Great War has officially passed into history.

It was billed as "the war to end all wars". Of course, it wasn't. In the event, it wasn't even the World War to end all World Wars. 21 years later we took the field again for a replay, resulting in seven more years of sacrifice of young lives. We can be thankful Khruschev and Kennedy stepped back from the brink in 1962 during the Cuban Missile Crisis - had they decided to make it a trilogy, the third instalment really would have lived up to the billing.

I've been to the Cenotaph in London during November, and it's quite a sight with all the wreaths lain. I've also been to the equivalent in Berlin, which is a simple place. It is both the tomb of an unknown German soldier and an unknown concentration camp victim. It reminded me that you need two armies to make a war, and both sides suffer the casualties. And it doesn't matter which side of a war you're on, the hurt and suffering to the families of the young men - and these days, young women - who do not return from the front is the same. Whether it's 1918 or 2009, and whatever flag the coffin is draped with.

Surely - surely - there has to be a better way.

DONOVAN - UNIVERSAL SOLDIER
(from the album "Universal Soldier", 1967)


He's five feet two, and he's six feet-four,
He fights with missiles and with spears.
He's all of thirty-one, and he's only seventeen,
Been a soldier for a thousand years.

He'a a Catholic, a Hindu, an Atheist, a Jain,
A Buddhist and a Baptist and a Jew.
And he knows he shouldn't kill, and he knows he always will,
Kill you for me my friend and me for you.

And he's fighting for Canada, he's fighting for France,
He's fighting for the USA,
And he's fighting for the Russians, and he's fighting for Japan,
And he thinks we'll put an end to war this way.

And he's fighting for democracy, he's fighting for the Reds,
He says it's for the peace of all.
He's the one who must decide who's to live and who's to die,
And he never sees the writing on the wall.

But without him,
How would Hitler have condemned him at Dachau?
Without him Caesar would have stood alone,
He's the one who gives his body as a weapon of the war,
And without him all this killing can't go on.

He's the Universal Soldier and he really is to blame,
His orders come from far away no more,
They come from here and there, and you and me,
And brothers can't you see,
This is not the way we put the end to war.