THERE are a few commemorations and activities around the townships and Goulburn for Remembrance Day today.

More than a few residents and visitors will pause and reflect during the minute’s silence at 11am.

They’ll reflect, if not on their own family’s history of sacrifice and loss in armed conflict, then on that of many others.

The burgeoning community support for such remembrances is not just among those who fought, or their families.

There is a greater awareness of what the Anzacs and Allieds did in both world wars. Some take pride, and most feel true regret for how the world wars ravaged us all.

Yet at the same time, those conflicts seem so far back in history, we wonder how young generations understand them.

A teenager from Ando answered that question yesterday.

Following the welcoming ceremony for The Men From Snowy River March in Belmore Park, Noah Coles, 14, stood up, unprompted, to say a few words.

“I live on a farm,” he said. “You sometimes come across a dead sheep and you wonder what to do. "I can’t imagine how hard it must have been for those men in World War One to deal with dead humans.”

The long march he’d just completed had “made the war real for us and made us appreciate what people did for our country,” he said. Talk about a walk to clear the head! If we have hope, we should seed it in our youth and watch it blossom as compassion