A Battle For Honour

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "A Shocking Revelation":

Wouldn't want to honour the person twice. Good work!

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I knew when I spoke about it , it might be hard for others  to understand why  the issue  was  important .
I said; "" Maybe it's because my uncle and  brother's names  are both on a war memorial "
I don't think of a name carved in granite in the circumstance as an honour  like a certificate of merit. 
It's a record of  sacrifice. A symbol of  terrible loss.
A memorial  that takes the place of a known resting place.
The reality is those  killed in the carnage of war, are unlikely  to have remains, let alone a resting place.
It would be no more appropriate to have a grave and  headstone    in a cemetery for a person who has been buried elsewhere.
A bomber crew or fighter aircraft blown to pieces in the sky are unlikely to  have  remains  gathered. 
The crew of a ship  blown out of the sea  by torpedoes are unlikely to have been  recovered from a sea of burning oil.
Thousands of rows of white markers in Allied cemeteries are nothing more than  physical a record of  names, ranks and numbers.
Memorials in towns and villages  and capitals all over the civilized world have a  significance  beyond material substance.
Far more than a list of names on a tablet to be added to on a  personal whim. 
During the 2003/2006 term another situation caused controversy. 
The fence around The War Memorial was in bad shape and had to be replaced. Parks staff discovered a veterinarian located in Edward's Plaza had cut an opening in the fence and installed a gate for  convenience of using town property  as a dog run for his patients because of a dog's need to defecate on grass.
The vet was informed by parks staff  the gate would not be replaced. He brought the  problem to Council.
Some Councillors found nothing wrong with his expectation . Especially since he had provided the fence around the leash free dog park on Industry Street
My objections were strenuous  for the same reason as cited above.
I could not understand their  argument any more  than they apparently understood mine.
I received a call from a high school teacher at G.W.Williams who did not choose to identify herself but had a listening  audience at her end of the phone. 
She infomed me she had lived in Aurora twenty-seven years. That's how old she was. Old enough to dismiss as ridiculous any argument other than her own; dog excrement is no worse than squirrels or bird droppings  and I was an out-of-date idiot. She seemed secure her status as a high school teacher lent weight to her logic.
Some years earlier , a  surplus tank became  available for anyone who would give it a home. Someone had the idea the war memorial would be a suitable location.Kids could climb and play on it.
It had to be pointed out  the War Memorial is not a memorial to war. 
Once again it had to be  stressed, it is a memorial to  human beings.
over a period of years, miles from home and families,  blown to pieces in infernal war machines like tanks and planes and ships and thousands of families left with the memory for the rest of their lives.