“The coming days will be days of great joy and of deep concern,” he wrote. “But alongside all of this, and perhaps before all of this, it is fitting for each of us to… bow our heads and offer our profound thanks to those to whom everything we hold dear is owed.

To the soldiers who left behind a wife and children at home, a livelihood and a routine, and charged into the fire simply because the country called. To the reservists who were called time and again and reported to duty without asking questions, simply because it had to be done. To the ‘old hands’ in their forties, fifties and beyond, who had forgotten when the army last called them, but who, confronted with the pictures of their slaughtered brothers and sisters, put on their uniforms, went south, and said, ‘Here I am.’

To the heroic women, the invisible soldiers, who moved among us in their multitudes as civilians and carried this war on their shoulders. To the children who wet their beds at night when they saw their father packing the big bag again and asked, ‘Again?’ and ‘How long?’ and ‘Until when?’ and received no answer.