Perhaps just by chance, but last evening I happened to reread George MacDonald Fraser’s Quartered Safe Out Here, his account of his service in the ranks in Burma during WWII.  Here is his summation:

  Glad I was there; I wouldn’t have missed it for anything.  A good thing to have done, and to have been, as Samuel Johnson so wisely observed.  No regrets about it, and much gratitude.  I can almost hear an interviewer saying: “What about guilt?”, to which I could only reply: “What’s to be guilty about?  I didn’t ask for the bloody war.”  He might speculate, because it seems to be the fashion nowadays, on guilt for having survived where others did not – which is one of the silliest notions I have ever heard.  If you feel someone got killed because you let them down, that’s a reason for guilt, no question – but to feel guilty because the man next to you caught it when you didn’t, that’s pointless.  Remember him, revere him, but don’t feel guilty.

It’s terribly trite, no doubt, but like most trite things it’s absolutely true:  the best comment on infantry war, the best philosophy, and above all the best advice, was written in four lines by Rudyard Kipling.  It isn’t jingoistic, it’s realistic; it has nothing to do with the higher questions of morality, but it has deep meaning for anyone who finds himself, as so many have done and will continue to do, facing the moment.

When first under fire and you’re wishful to duck,

Don’t look nor take heed at the man that is struck,

Be thankful you’re living, and trust to your luck,

And march to your front like a soldier.

Seems quite fitting to the day to me.  So pray charge your glasses in salute to all the brave men and women who have done so in the past – both those who made it and those who didn’t – and continue to do so today.