Lest we forget other charities

Remembrance Day is a long-standing and peculiarly British tradition that has been upheld in this country for nearly a century now. It is a day for honouring the dead, for a moment of silence in commemoration of those who have sacrificed their lives in service of their country. But despite this reverent attitude, the day cannot help but fall short of its ideals to some degree.

As Alan Bennett noted in his play ‘The History Boys’, Remembrance Day and its year-round monuments all veil the unspoken guilt of a nation of survivors towards their dead: “It’s not ‘lest we forget’, it’s lest we remember”.

We can’t remember everybody. Countless men and women died without burial, and the bones of many who were buried now lie under nameless crosses dug into foreign soil. By donning a paper poppy and giving these numberless casualties a face of stone carved with names, we can exorcise our feelings of inadequacy in the face of something as all-consuming as war.

We make the act of remembrance a task, and when that task is done it is back to normality once again. We put our change into a tin and go on our way, not thinking much more about it. But who is it that suffers from this veiled mass forgetfulness?

As students on budgets, you are perhaps more likely to put that small amount of change into the first or most prominent collecting tin that we encounter. That’s not a shortcoming; we’re giving, and that’s what counts, but giving to whom?

One high-profile charity that most people will have heard of or donated to at some point is Help for Heroes. A fairly new-born charity, Help for Heroes has garnered popular attention and endorsement in recent years, and as a result is one of the more well-funded charities of its kind. This is no bad thing: it helps those returning from Afghanistan in critical conditions who are in severe need of rehabilitation. However, whilst its prioritisation of Afghanistan soldiers is worthy and helps it give much more focused support, it cannot be denied that sufferers from other conflicts tend to be overshadowed. It is hard to ignore a maimed human body, a fresh face returned from the front lines, but perhaps not so difficult to overlook a person who walks and talks like anybody else you might meet, but who is dealing with long-term psychological wounds inflicted by combat.

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and Chronic Depression are just two of the often debilitating and, in many cases, fatal afflictions faced by retired soldiers: those who are often overlooked by charities who prioritise currently-serving soldiers. It has been estimated that more soldiers who served during the Falklands Conflict of the 1980s have committed suicide since the war ended than died during the conflict itself. This figure has been disputed as a statistic, but it is still chilling evidence for the need for support for long-retired soldiers as well as the recently-returned. This disparity in funding seems to me to be a somewhat unavoidable limitation of charities like H4H, but that does not mean that it is an all-consuming one.

There are charities who aim to help service personnel from all conflicts, and these are just as worthy of our (budgeted) donations as any high-profile charity out there. By giving as widely and wisely as possible, we can go some way in remembering those still with us; we can try to make sure that those who are not yet gone are not forgotten.

If you are interested in finding out more, or want to make a donation towards the rehabilitation of armed forces’ servicemen and -women, look at the links below:

For the Army, there is The Soldiers’ Charity: http://www.soldierscharity.org/donate

For the Royal Navy and the Royal Marines, there is the Royal Navy & Royal Marines Charity: https://rnrmc.org.uk/support-us

For the Royal Air Force, there is the Royal Air Force Benevolent Fund: http://www.rafbf.org/171/donate-now.html

All of the charities listed here offer support to serving and retired members of their respective forces.