For the vast majority of us, the ones who haven’t fought, it isn’t hard to imagine what it’s like to face war. It isn’t difficult to put ourselves in the boots of those who sacrificed body and mind for the freedoms we take for granted today and every other day. To understand what they went through isn’t a stretch for the rest of us — it is absolutely and unquestionably impossible.

The more I learn about combat, especially the combat of the two Great wars, the more aware I become of my ignorance. An ignorance that can only come from the world we live in today, one that exists because of the sacrifices of those before us.

The utter brutality that so many endured is incomprehensible. Battles lasting for weeks. Thundering explosions in the sky overhead, at all hours of the day and night. Shards of searing metal raining down, tearing apart everything in their path. For those on the ground, their only protection were the trenches.

Though unlike the trenches of Hollywood films, these were a hell of their own. After months of constant fighting, these miserable places of refuge were not carved through virgin earth. As the battles progressed, the trenches were dug through a terrain of rotting corpses. They flowed with rivers of mud and shit. This is where our great heroes lived, where they ate and slept and survived. Where each day they had to muster the courage to climb the muddy walls and face a storm of bullets and shrapnel once more.

For those of us that have never had to face the revulsion of war, we simply cannot grasp its reality. We take our freedoms for granted for the simple fact that we have them. The reason we can’t truly comprehend the sacrifices made is that we live in a world that was born of those very sacrifices.

Today we pause to reflect, to acknowledge what we’ve been given. More importantly, to recognize where it came from.

Today we Remember.