Ninety three years ago this coming Friday, the 11th day of the 11th month at the 11th hour, peace was achieved ending the Great and terrible war, World War I. A war unlike any other, in which atrocities abounded and 13 million were killed in a titanic struggle for freedom. The moment when hostilities ceased on the Western Front became universally associated with the remembrance of those who had died in this war and all other wars.
Remembrance Day, or Veterans Day was initially noted a two minute period of silence during which everyone, everywhere stopped what they were doing to remember. It was also the time when the Allied nations brought back the remains of their Unknown Soldier and interred them with full military honors in their respective national shrines; Westminster Abbey in London, Arc de Triomphe in Paris. Most other allied nations adopted the tradition of entombing unknown soldiers. In 1921 we interred our Unknown in Arlington National Cemetery. Go there, visit and remember.
We are asked to remember, lest we forget, lest we presume that freedom is the default reality of our world, that kindness is natural, and peace a given.
I remember as a child, every chilly November 11th in Canada I went to the Cenotaph with my father, who served at sea in World War II with the Royal Canadian Navy, my grandfather, who flew in England with the Royal Air Force in World War I, and sometimes my brother and sisters would join in the long walk.
The Cenotaph was made of grey granite and on it were carved the names of those from Oakville who had served and died for the cause of freedom.
We’d listen to the bagpipes play a lament, the bugler play taps.
They read the list every year. The names were always the same they never changed: Ernest Appleby, Frank Bailey, Edward Osler Bath, all the way to John Young.
All known to my family… many were family.
And each year they’d read the poem … "In Flanders Fields" and I’d watch the veterans wipe a tear, blow their nose and walk back home.
I asked my grandfather about this man Edward Osler Bath. He told me that he was a Captain in the 48th Highlanders, an infantry division, which fought in the World War I battle of Ypres. This battle was the first in modern warfare to see the horror of chemical warfare. Captain Bath was caught in the German chlorine mustard gas attack in April of 1915. He died soon afterwards.
That was the end of the story, until my grandfather gave me a brown canvas bag. A brown canvas dunnage bag, with a faded stenciled name, rank and division: Captain E.O. Bath, 48th Highlanders.
A reminder of a Freedom Fighter, that bag takes on special meaning. Sometimes I look at it and ask it to tell me what it was like. What about the war, the struggle, the fight for freedom?
A number of years ago I was doing some research and discovered that Captain Bath died in the very battle that inspired the Division medical officer, John McRae to write the poem In Flanders’ Fields…the one read at the ceremony each year, the poem memorized by school children.
It is a powerful poem, written about the mystical irony of poppies growing between the crosses of the dead, in soil fertilized by blood, serenaded by the cries of the dying, there the poppies grew testifying to life, honor and freedom.
In Flanders’ Fields
In Flanders’ Fields the poppies blowKorea, Vietnam, World War II, Gulf War, Bosnia, Iraq, Afghanistan … war by any name speaks of the struggle for freedom… freedom of which you and I are the guardians and trustees. So hold high the torch we receive from failing hands and let us keep faith with those who have gone before us fighting for freedom.
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders’ Fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders’ Fields.
As caregivers you and I are also engaged in another war. A war that is waged every day with the terrors of fear and the hope of healing. A war often brought on by accident, and sometimes choice, the victims all deserve your best, your bravest, your voice of comfort, your touch of hope. This is a war for which there is no Geneva treaty, but a truce of hope crafted by your caring and skillful ways.
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