I had a dream once. A year ago. Germans invaded Singapore, except Singapore was snowing and looked more like 1940′s Europe, plus HDB flats. I remember turning the corner to my block in the classic 40′s motorcar, only to find a blockade in front of me – with barbed wires, sand bags, soldiers and all.

We didn’t stop. Just calmly continued forward until they were far, far behind us.

I remember being frozen in my seat as I watched the soldiers through my window. As I watched them watch me. It was terrifying. The invasion was sudden, and I remember frantically trying to call my sister (who was still living in Sengkang then) to tell her to get her family out of there as quickly as possible. Go somewhere safe. But we couldn’t reach her. The phonelines were dead.

Then I remember being part of the resistance, on one of our missions. We were somewhere out at sea, in scuba suits, trying to infiltrate a Nazi base. The last I remember of the dream was picking up my gun and coming up to a guard patrolling the entrance. I remember feeling scared, and I remember wondering if I’ll live through this. And that was it.

As far as dreams went, this was by far the scariest. The helplessness was real, and I felt danger at every turn… that at any second, me and anyone in my family could be bombed, killed… senselessly murdered.

Flame & Citron somehow triggered this memory. Just finished watching it.

I have always been one to romanticize about war… the camaraderie, the heroism, the selfless sacrifice. The love that blossoms between people as death creeps nearer. War is hardly ever a subject you should romanticize about, I know, but through its heinous nature, it reveals our tremendous capacity to do what is good and just and right.

The paradoxes of war. The very reason why I find war films so compelling.

But the wars I know about, read about, watched about… I know how they all end. The good guys win, and things get resolved. The Allied Forces triumph, Hitler kills himself, Japan surrenders. It’s always a happy ending. There is enough good in it for me to be able to romanticize about it.

But I never really thought about how it would be like to be in the middle of a war and not know how it was going to end. To not be promised with a happy ending… till I had that dream. And it terrified me.

Which puts films like Flame and Citron, Sophie Scholl and others about freedom fighters into perspective. Fighting in the army is one thing, but fighting in a resistance is a completely different story. You are behind enemy lines, stuck in occupied territory where you are outnumbered and under-equipped. I felt the terror. I felt the fear. But these people, these ordinary people, willingly made the choice to put their lives in danger when they could have have easily chosen to lay low and survive. The Germans had no quarrel with them, after all. But they did it nevertheless. They paid the ultimate sacrifice for the sake of freedom.

For the sake of justice.

Will I be able to do something like that? Will I be like how I was in my dream, part of the resistance? Probably not. My sense of justice might compel me to act, but fear itself would stop me from doing anything that would put my life in danger.

These people are national heroes because they did what most of us can’t and will never be able to do – they stared at death in the face as they challenged an insurmountable enemy, and lived as dead men walking. Watch Flame and Citron. Watch Sophie Scholl. Even if the movie is too long, even if you don’t like war films, watch them because these people deserve to be remembered.