Remembrance Day is one of the most important days of the year for me. It is also a very emotional day for me, for I spend a good deal of it thinking about my Grandpa. I can easily see him in my minds eye, giving the Veterans Benediction at Remembrance Days long past. If I was at home in Roblin I’d have gone to his grave with my dad, and you can not imagine how much I longed to be there today. I can not remember the last time I was able to make it through the minute of silence at 11:00 without the tears welling up.
Remembrance Day is probably more relevant in these days than ever before. Canada is once again losing young men and women in conflict on foreign soil. Parents are once again losing their children, and children their father or mother.
It is also probably more urgent to observe Remembrance Day now than ever before. We are at the point that we are going to lose the voices from the Great War, and with them the lessons of just how horrific war can be, and how we must fight to avoid sinking into those abysses again.
There are just three Great War veterans still alive in Canada today, one is 106 and the other two are 105. There is currently pressure mounting to give the last one a State Funeral, to mark the passing of the last man who fought in a war that profoundly changed Canada, indeed the world. The Great War is one of those watershed moments in our history. Nothing could ever be the same after it.
Of course some voices from the war will always be with us, even after the last soldier passes on. The Canadian Archives recently opened a Web page which has recordings of Great War veterans recounting some of their stories. Veterans Affairs has something similar. And of course there are the memoirs and poetry of those who fought, if only there was a greater interest in them.
Arguably one of the greatest poets of the Great War was Wilfred Owen, and arguably one of the greatest poems of that war is his Dulce et Decorum est. Tragically, although he didn’t have to return to the front after being wounded he chose to, and he was killed one week before the Armistice silenced the guns of that war. His parents received the notice that he had been killed as the bells were ringing across England on the 11th of November 1918. Dulce et Decorum est is a searing voice against those who would seek to glorify war.
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of disappointed shells that dropped behind.
GAS! Gas! Quick, boys!– An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And floundering like a man in fire or lime.–
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,–
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori
.
(Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori translates roughly as "it is sweet and good to die for one’s country.")
I’ll leave you with one other voice from the Great War, that of my Grandpa. Grandpa returned to Vimy in 1968, fifty one years after fighting there. He wrote this poem soon after.
VIMY- Revisited, 1968.
I stood on the spot where Nine Elms stood,
Some fifty years gone by;
Looked down to the west to Mt. St. Eloi
Its tower still raised high.
Nearby in the soil of Vimy Ridge,
Graves by the thousand lay,
Covering dust & bones of German youth,
That war had brought that way.
Fifty thousand, they said, lay there
All silent now and still,
Slain in a war that settled naught;
As now, war never will.
Over by Thelus Wood I went
Looking for yet some more;
Looking for graves of comrades,
The bitter fruits of war.
"Over the top and the best of luck,"
Again and yet again,
Winning a war for a losing peace,
Giving their lives in vain.
Row on row their graves are laid,
Canada’s bravest sons,
Sleeping the valiant sleep of death
Spewed from a thousand guns.
Boys from the lovely British Isles,
From Canada’s fair domain,
Buried there on Vimy Ridge,
The story they tell is plain;
"War is hell!" from the devil’s school
‘Cause man won’t live by the Golden Rule.
– A.T.Kines, Feb. 1969,
Comments
4 responses
It took me many years to come to terms with Rememberance Day–I had to overcome my reaction against my never-a-soldier father’s overly romantic view of war. Your post affirms how I feel now. Thank you for that, and for the poetry.
What moving and powerful poetry. Thank you for sharing.
Hey,
Not sure if you’ve seen this picture before:
http://www.stothers.com/momex/NavCode/photo/PhotoID/23.html
Something struck me about the picture and I remembered your blog (as someone close to my family served with the 16th Battalion). I think the fellow in this shot was with the 12th MG Coy however. I’m guessing Lens sector?
Anyways, looks to be the same setting (and same chair!)
Cheers,
Chris,
Toronto.
Hey Chris,
The picture was indeed taken at the same place, and you’re right, it is probably the same chair.
The photo was taken at the Chateau at Camblain L’Abbe near Vimy Ridge and home to various Canadian HQs during the war. I went looking for it April 2007 but apparently the Chateau was destroyed.