Dr Peter Moore: Time to 'give peace a chance'

As I wear a poppy on Remembrance Day, I am very aware that I am lucky, born in the right place at the right time. 
My parents and grandparents were all involved in war. Grandparents on both sides of my family lost brothers in the First World War. One was killed in Mesopotamia, current day Iraq, a part of the world which is still not stable.  
He was a schoolteacher and must have hoped for an ordinary peaceful life. It was not the war to end all wars as they believed. Although we criticise Neville Chamberlin for appeasement and the Munich agreement, having seen the horrors of war at first hand, his desperation to prevent another war was understandable. Hindsight is easy. 
In the Second World War, after being rescued from the beaches of Dunkirk, my father fought in Burma where he fell seriously ill with rheumatic fever. He was admitted to hospital in India where he nearly died. I’m quite glad he didn’t.  
For the rest of his life, he suffered from a problem with a heart valve. He died at 53 when I was nineteen, six months before I was accepted by medical school. Because he developed rheumatic fever due to the appalling conditions fighting in Burma, my mother was classified as a war widow.  
He never spoke about his time in Burma but rheumatic fever is a condition brought on by poor living conditions. In forty years as a doctor in the UK, I never saw a case and so the chances of developing the same heart problem in the UK today is extremely remote. The final irony is that, in the unlikely event of developing the heart valve problem today, he would have had an operation for an artificial heart valve and lived far longer. 
My father had an amazing sense of humour. He argued that the ability to laugh at ourselves keeps us sane. Looking back, I also wonder whether this was also his way of dealing with post-traumatic stress. 
I was named Peter after a close childhood friend of both my parents. He was a merchant seaman killed in the war. We are the lucky generation. 
I was also born in Devon where there has been peace all my life. My life would have been very different had I been born in Gaza, Israel, Syria or Ukraine. Sadly, there are too many other places in the world blighted by war to mention everywhere. 
I once hoped that by the time there were very few Second World War veterans left, Remembrance Day would become a historical quirk. No one would have first-hand experience of war. I wish I had been right but instead I was naive. 
John Lennon may have asked “Give peace a chance” in 1969 but over forty years after he was killed, peace has still not been given a chance. 
My father hated the expression “gave their lives”. It reminded him of the Japanese suicide pilots. He had very brave friends and colleagues who took considerable risks knowing that they might be killed they did not deliberately “give their lives”. 
Wearing a poppy should be more than just remembering the dead, it should be a plea for peace. True peace is not simply the absence of war. It is a situation when the whole idea of armed conflict is ludicrous.  
For the last 900 years, England has had recurrent wars with France. Today, we are not merely at peace with France but the whole idea of a war with France is the stuff of satire, quite impossible. We do not need to rebuild the fort at Berry Head to stop the French. Even the most ardent Brexiter did not suggest we send a war ship across the channel. We must hope that one day the idea of a war between Israel and Palestine will seem equally ludicrous.