There have been quite a number of ceremonies in recent years honouring historic battles and the like from the twentieth century. Just last weekend Canadians "celebrated" the ninetieth anniversary of their participation in the slaughter of Vimy Ridge during World War One (why if they've waited this long they couldn't hold out for another ten years for the centenary I don't know) with the opening of a new memorial in France at the site of the battle.

Of course the Canadian Prime Minister, Steven Harper, couldn't pass up the opportunity to link Canada's presence at Vimy with the Canadian troops being killed in Afghanistan today. Not that he said anything remotely resembling the truth; ninety years later and we still haven't learned anything, our soldiers are still dying in someone else's war.

No he hauled out the usual platitudes about paying the ultimate price, making the supreme sacrifice, and dying for your freedom. Nobody has bothered to explain how a Canadian soldier getting blown up on either Vimy Ridge in France in 1917 or some outback near Kandahar in Afghanistan guaranteed or is guaranteeing my freedom.

Hell, the men who are dying in Afghanistan aren't even ensuring the freedom of the people who live in that country, so I don't know how anybody can claim they're doing anything for me. But that's what politicians do, they try and make use of symbols to generate emotional responses in people so they don't think about the illogic of what is being said and question things being done in their name.

But amidst all the hoopla surrounding Vimy this year, the invasion of Normandy during World War Two three years ago, and every November 11th commemorating the end of World War One, an anniversary of import has managed to slip by most politicians. This April 26th will mark the 70th anniversary of the bombing of the Spanish village of Guernica by German bombers supporting the fascist rebellion in Spain led Francisco Franco.

The bombing raid has the distinction of being the first full scale attack on a strictly civilian target during a war. While Mussolini had used some air power in his ugly conquest of Ethiopia the year earlier and others have tried to lay claim latterly to being the first civilian targets hit by bombs, the attack on Guernica still holds the dubious distinction of being the first ever deliberate targeting of civilians by the military.

Reading the eye witness account at the link above leaves one no doubt of the intent behind the attack. If they hadn't meant to bomb civilians they could have stopped after the first bomber dropped his payload and realized it wasn't a military target.

Instead, according to the eyewitness the raid lasted for three and one quarter hours during which three types of German plane dropped bombs of up to a maximum of 1,000lbs and over 3,000 2lb aluminium incendiary devices. Nor would the accompanying fighters have deliberately sought out and machine-gunned people who had taken shelter in the fields surrounding the town if it hadn't been a deliberate attack on the civilian population.