11^th September 2014.

Dear Reader,

Today is a rather bitter-sweet day.

On this day we remind ourselves, those who have completed their service with honour and to the best of their abilities, that we have been able to walk, limp, or hobble back to fight another day.

Many, including our 343 dead dear Brothers and Sisters of the NYFD did not, and for the long years that lie ahead those who loved them, and all our fallen comrades, will pause and ponder the anguished, ‘if only’.

We should remind ourselves and the Public we serve with integrity, that every single Firefighter who signs on the dotted line knows that at some point in service, he or she will most certainly feel the breath of death on their faces, whether it be at the most dramatic of incidents, or more than likely, at the most innocuous when their ‘guard’ is down to the point of vulnerability.

Be that as it may, that is why we joined to serve our fellow man and in all our actions we ought to have always been inspired by that thought deep inside our Souls.

Today, as usual, around this beautiful world, by night and day, the klaxon, bell, or tannoy will sound and the turnout will leave for the unknown challenges in the creedless service of others in distress. Not everyone will return and those who do so may be marked for life by the experience. That is what is expected…

There can be no finer vocation than the Fire Service because we seek not to impose our laws, our politics, our views, or indeed our natural prejudices, on those we serve. All those feelings are sublimated to one thought, and one thought only, the desire to bring immediate compassion and care to the anguished and distressed regardless of the personal price.

Should the price come then we support each other, or the surviving family, with special dignity, loyalty, and the pastoral care of camaraderie born in adversity.

Today is also a bitter day.

J’accuse…

We watch and read the shameful public misbehaviour of those ‘Officers’ who are meant to lead and to set a continuous example of their integrity which we might respect; we watch their calculating greed; we watch their self-serving avarice; we watch their wallet gluttony; we watch their insatiable self-indulgence; we hear of their shoddy closed doors deals; but above all else we know directly of their disloyalty and their neglect of their fallen comrades and maimed disabled Fire Service Veterans and their Widows.

They it was in office, who failed to provide a scintilla of pastoral care as their terminally ill comrades died alone without the respect and support they had earned from the Service within which they had served with courage and honour.

They it was in office, who allowed and approved that their comrades and Widows be underpaid their disablement injury pensions.

They it was in office, who denied the release to their terminally ill comrades their Personal Record Files so that they could not prove the underpayment of their disablement injury pensions.

They it was in office, who viciously and  repeatedly dragged one of their dying comrades through the Courts in his wheel chair at his and the taxpayers’ expense until they were forced to release his records, and still they refused to pay his correct disablement injury pension, and the arrears now due to his Widow.

But then we know what they were actually about at that time…self-inspired insatiable greed. Go here.