Remembrance Sunday 2011, on Dispatch from the Razor's Edge

"To you from failing hands we throw
    The torch; be yours to hold it high.
    If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
          In Flanders fields."

- LTC Dr John McCrae

Today is Remembrance Sunday in the UK. The Queen, along with every living former Prime Minister, turn out in Whitehall to lay a wreath at the Cenotaph – the UK's memorial to all of its war dead. Similar ceremonies take place across the UK and the Commonwealth, and at military bases in Afghanistan. Today's was the first ever without a WWI veteran. They are all gone now. Here's the two-minute silence. You can join in wherever you are.

Today I also read an article about the new challenges facing our combat veterans.

Missing Limbs, More Suicides, No Jobs: 9 Battles for Today�s Vets

By Katie Drummond

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were in many ways acutely different from their predecessors. With a new kind of war came a new host of challenges for those who fought in it. Fewer fatalities has led to more life-long injuries, an economy in crisis will translate to fewer jobs and less federal funding, and the use of unconventional weaponry is already apparent in the prevalence of invisible, untreatable mental wounds.

read full article →

If you haven't clicked through to that article yet, bear with me. Because I was so struck by a picture of a veteran there. He looks like a totally lovely man, and he has a completely lovely smile:

As some of you will have seen in my post on fb and g+, Tim Mathews was an Army infantry and intelligence officer, and instructor, who served three tours in Iraq… then earned both an MBA (GWU) and a JD (UMass)… and who has now been looking for work for six months. Meanwhile, he's been contributing to the Yale Journal of International Affairs and an Afghan Law Bibliography, working as a research fellow at his law school, and mentoring high school kids.

Is the world completely upside down when a man with this level of talent and industriousness can't get hired? I suggest that his service record alone ought to propel him to the head of any queue of job applicants. Here's his LinkedIn profile, which perhaps you'll be willing to pass around until he gets a completely awesome job and the universe makes sense again.

hope the military the uk london

Dispatch from the Razor's Edge is owned and operated by novelist, technologist, vegan, exercise junkie, classical liberal, rambler, and Londoner Michael Stephen Fuchs.

Fuchs is the author of the novels The Manuscript and Pandora's Sisters, both published worldwide by Macmillan in hardback, paperback and all e-book formats (and in translation); the D-Boys series of high-tech, high-concept, spec-ops military adventure novels – D-Boys, Counter-Assault, and Close Quarters Battle (coming in 2016); and is co-author, with Glynn James, of the bestselling Arisen series of special-operations military ZA novels. The second nicest thing anyone has ever said about his work was: "Fuchs seems to operate on the narrative principle of 'when in doubt put in a firefight'." (Kirkus Reviews, more here.)

Fuchs was born in New York; schooled in Virginia (UVa); and later emigrated to the San Francisco Bay Area, where he lived through the dot-com boom. Subsequently he decamped for an extended period of tramping before finally rocking up in London, where he now makes his home. He does a lot of travel blogging, most recently of some very long walks around the British Isles. He's been writing and developing for the web since 1994 and shows no particularly hopeful signs of stopping.

You can reach him on .

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Dispatch from the Razor's Edge is owned and operated by novelist, technologist, vegan, exercise junkie, classical liberal, rambler, and Londoner Michael Stephen Fuchs.


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