Hope - Green goddess

&;#65279;Can't say I slept too well last night, my eldest son as
a active serviceman is part alfresco. He's not trained as a fireman and
doesn't earn nowhere near what firemen do. As for the so called
'self-respect' that they go on about as a justification for their claim
of a 40\% pay increase well, I can't help but think that whilst being
firemen may carry similar risks as anyone in the armed forces do but
not to the same extremities that are expected by someone in the armed
forces, firemen are not living, walking, targets. More importantly
Soldiers also have the same living expenses don't they?. I suppose
being the Mother of one of those Soldiers and the daughter of an ex
serviceman, makes me wonder just how much we value our lives and our so
called freedoms.

On Armistice day I stood talking to a women who was protesting against
War with Iraq and just mentioned that I had a son in the Armed forces.
You'd think I'd slapped her one in the face the way she reacted. It was
as if I was responsible for the actions of the government, I felt
totally at a loss. Even If I tried to explain to her that I too didn't
want war either, it would not have made any difference. You can't with
people who are so selfish enough not to see that freedom to stand with
a banner and protest against war as something that has been fought for
via a war on their and our behalf in the past. Yes, war is terrible it
is something we should not contemplate but what price freedom?.

Why should we (well I did), stand in silence on the 11th? I noticed
many who didn't participate and I wondered why? Why should we remember
war and its atrocities. If we could ask the many hundred's of million's
of civilians who were, have, and are being ttortured and killed the
same question perhaps we'd understand why. Due to my father's various
contacts, I got to listen to many stories told by those who were far
east prisoners of war, along with being given the privilege of reading
the draft hand written version of a book, produced after much research
by a "comfort women", not the printed book itself but the unedited one;
the horrors I read made me sick.

Then a couple of years ago when I stood on the mall with my Father, an
elderly women
grasped my arm and didn't let go until after she'd turned her back on
the Emperor. This thin Dutch woman was well dressed in black. Her thin
grey hair tucked under a hat. I remember her hands more that her
feature's, mainly because of the way they grasped my arm. She had long
slender fingers wised and old, the skin mottled and clear. She was well
dressed and had a cross pinned to her jacket lapel. She stood so close
to me I could smell the faint perfume she was wearing. She came to
stand by me after I'd nearly been arrested for holding a placard, which
my father took away from me, knowing they wouldn't arrest him. The
media would of had a field day. Anyway back to the old Lady. I
encouraged her to talk, gently asking her questions. She'd being out
there in Singapore with her parents, her father working as a
missionary, when they had be taken captive by the Japanese. She had
been thirteen at the time. I will not go into the details she did, but
I will say that whilst she relayed her story all I could think of was
my own teenage daughter who was safely at home. I had read stories and
the book I had read did prepare me for the telling of her story plus
I'd seen various TV programs but to meet an actual casualty of war and
hear their story straight
from their own mouth makes you somehow think differently.

When finally the Japanese Emperor went past and she had turned her
back, her whole
demeanour changed. She suddenly seem to stand taller and she finally
let go of her grasp.
Her words will haunt me more than anything, along with the reaction to
them by those
standing near by. "I have my life back.. I can live free". There was a
turbaned taxi driver near by who had heard her. He laughed at her
mockingly, he couldn't understand just what her freedom was nor what it
meant to her. I could hear him making derogative remarks to the person
he was standing with. She just ignored him, her won freedom so simply
gained that his ignorance was so obviously meaningless. Just by the
smile and the colour in her face you could tell that no amount of
mocking could take from her what she had gained that day.
For all that time since being freed she had lived with the knowledge of
what had happened and had lived in fear, the truth of her life was only
half lived because she couldn't face it's reality. She said good bye to
it that day on the Mall, at last she faced her demon and destroyed any
hold it had over her. She had freedom!.

As for the taxi driver he had freedom and took it for granted just like
the woman who was protesting in my local town on the 11th had her's,
just as the vast majority of us do. The protester in my high street had
told me she had sat the second world war out safely, as a child, at
home. She had never been beaten because she hadn't bowed deep enough
nor had her virginity forcefully taken from her during her puberty. I
haven't either but by listening and understanding I knew what the Dutch
women was saying. A bit like we shouldn't remember Armistice day
because people seem to think that it represents War that we should now
forget. I wonder if September the 11th will be so easily forgotten?. As
we no longer understand due to time that we're not honouring war or
armies, we remember our right's to freedom and peace and those who died
for us to get those rights. I'm sure if I ask anyone one of you what
you have in life you would not think of your freedom, your freedom to
think as you do, in the way you do, as being one of those things that
you can do with some
unlimited freedom. You are controlled totally are you?.

My father served his country for 27 years so that we could have what we
take so much for
granted and then had his self-respect taken from him by having to fight
for his pension or
should that be to stop his pension from being taxed to the hilt. He
didn't do it because of self
respect he did it because he'd given the best part of his life and
suffered from ill health, and needed our support not because he was
being greedy but because he wanted some of that hard earned freedom for
himself and his family.

That is why I'm not so sure that I believe in what the firemen are
doing, somehow it doesn't seem right but I'm not sure why. Perhaps it's
the after effect of September the 11th but somewhere in this muddled
world, greed has been tided itself to self-respect. But then again
could you give up your life so freely and then expect nothing in
return? How do we measure a person's self - respect? How do we value
another person sense of freedom?

These questions that I've been asking myself most of the night are all
tied to my fear of that knock on my door by a police man along with
military man to tell me the worse news any parent would wish to hear.
It was the acknowledgement that my son has chosen a very dangerous
career, one in which the peace demonstrators don't want to understand
because it means that they have to question what they see as freedom
and how we gain it and maintain it ?

So are the firemen worth 40 \% pay increase?. Then surely the Armed
forces deserve the same increase?. And they are, then so is everyone
else, and next year why not 60 or 80 \%?. How can we argue against
giving it as anyone who dares to say no or to think the opposite will
be seen as .............. where does freedom end? And how thankfully
should we be and too whom?