Rememberance Day

[CanuckAmok]

Well, tomorrow is the day: Rememberance Day (or in the US, it's still called "Armistice Day", isn't it?)

I go to the Cenotaph, and make the only prayer I make all year. I pray for peace.

Some people believe that Remembrance Day is a celebration of warfare. Of course, the people who served and died in history's wars have helped guarantee the rights of those people to believe whatever they want to believe.

For me, nothing communicates the horror of war more effectively, to meet the flesh and blood survivors of war.

When I was a kid, my school used to take us to the Cenotaph in the town square every November 11th, to witness the Wreath Ceremony. That was before Novemeber 11th was declared a holiday. Now there's nobody besides the few parents who understand the significance of the Day to ensure the youth of today attend the Ceremony.

When I was a kid, if you can believe this, there were still Boer War and WW1 Veterans attending the Ceremonies. Now they are all gone, and the ranks of WW2 and Korean War vets are elderly, and shrinking exponentially. Sooon they will all be gone, as well. And, if there is an afterlife, they will be reunited with the friends they lost defending their ideals.

When they are all gone, we are the only ones who will rememeber them. We must, as we are reminded in "In Flanders Fields", not break faith with those who die. From failing hands, they pass the torch, and it is, indeed, our responsibility to hold it high.

Tomorrow I will stand on the sidelines, with my blue beret discreetly tucked into my coat pocket (I always intend to wear it, but somehow can never bring myself to do so), and witness the elderly men and women march, hobble, or roll to their Sacred Site, and bear witness as they remember. I will stand at attention when they pass, I will respect the Veterans and the Ceremony, and will continue to struggle for Peace, and for the Progressive Ideal. I will even stand at attention for my National Anthem, as much as I usually object to such jingoism, because it isn't my day, it's their Day.

And tomorrow, following the Parade, I will pay my one annual visit to the Royal Canadian Legion, and buy a round for as many Veterans as I can afford.

I urge the good people of Deomcratic Underground to join me in paying tribute to the Veterans of our Wars, and to show them that we will rememeber them.

Peace.


In Flanders Fields, by John McCrae

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
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.



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The name of John McCrae (1872-1918) may seem out of place in the distinguished company of World War I poets, but he is remembered for what is probably the single best-known and popular poem from the war, "In Flanders Fields." He was a Canadian physician and fought on the Western Front in 1914, but was then transferred to the medical corps and assigned to a hospital in France. He died of pneumonia while on active duty in 1918. His volume of poetry, In Flanders Fields and Other Poems, was published in 1919.

[commander bunnypants]

1. Thanks my Canadian friend

and all you other friends to the North.

Have a Labatts :beer: on me


DDQM

[CanuckAmok]

2. Thanks Demman--glad to see you're back!

n/t

[commander bunnypants]

3. Just a stupid

stress meltdown.

DDQM

[Swede]

15. Yeah,glad to see your still on DU Denman.

I sometimes forget the good times instead of the bad,makes for a tough day.

[JHB]

4. Veteran's Day

It's been Veteran's day here since 1954. By that time, it wasn't so important to remember the WWI Armistice, but there were plenty of reasons to remember Vets.

[Tyler Durden]

5. RSM Henry Johnson, Princess Patricia's CLI

1915-1918, 1939-1945, died 1955 (cancer)

RIP Grandfather.

And Dad: RCAF, 1942: medical. Died 1991 (cancer). See you again, Dad.

[Tyler Durden]

6. Once more, with FEELING.

In rememberance of the flower of British and Canadian youth, spent in war, wounded in spirit and soul, years longer than our own and for our protection as well.

I will wait for the trumpet call at the 11th hour, and weep, as I always do.

[Westegg]

7. Flanders/ WW I Vets

I just heard an interesting piece on "NPR" this morning about a Flanders battlefield that had recently been excavated by archeologists, who discovered much historical info about the terrible trenches of that war, and the men who had to survive there for years ---along with 1000s of hastily dug graves. It's all about to be paved over for a Belgian freeway.

Progress?Oh well.

I'll offer up a prayer for my late grandfather, an American World War I veteran. Dale McIntyre. 1896--1990. See you on the other side, granddad.

[LuLu550]

8. thank you for reminding us...

I was in Paris a few years ago on Nov. 11 and was struck by the overwhelming gratitude and reverence they showed not only their own war dead, but also to the Americans who died in WW I and WW II.

My great uncle died off the coast of France during WW I and the ceremonies in France made me feel close to him and the loss my great grandparents and grandmother must have felt.

Here in the US, Veteran's Day, like so many of our holidays, is now all about shopping...

Shame on us...

Even though we do not support the wars, we should always honor the warriors.

[Zuni]

12. I am glad to hear that

Earlier this year I saw pictures in the newspaper of British and American war graves, memorials and monuments being defaced by vandals.

I would much rather see this kind of memorial.

[Tyler Durden]

9. And lest we forget the horror:

DULCE ET DECORUM EST

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 gas-shells dropping softly behind.

Gas! Gas! Quick boys!--An ecstacy 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,
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.

Wilfred Owen, France: 1918; Requiset en Pace

[Westegg]

13. Thank you...

Thank you, for those wonderful, searing words of Wilfred Owen, the Shropshire lad, killed in action at the Western Front, 1918. Twenty-five years old.

The musically inclinded might want to take a listen to Benjamin Britten's stunning "War Requiem," which utilizes some of Owen's poetry.

[Swede]

18. I'd forgot about this great old poem.

[ironflange]

20. We studied this poem in high school

I've never forgotten it, especially the last two lines. I think it helped to make me what I am today.

[roguevalley]

10. beautiful. thank you.

[Zuni]

11. I say a prayer every 11/11

for peace and for the souls of those who have died.

November 11 is a very, very moving day for me, perhaps the most moving day of the year.

[Davis_X_Machina]

14. May their souls...

..and all ths souls of the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace.

Such an almighty waste -- and the 'peace' was botched, giving us Great War 2.0, as WW II might be better called.

Soon all those vets of that show will be gone, too.

'Like the generation of leaves of grass, so the generations of men', as Homer said so long ago.

[Swede]

16. In memory of my dad.

The day Canada declared war on Germany my dad and his brother volunteered to serve their country. Dad was twenty years old. During the war dad served with the Royal Canadian Signal Corps in England, and once in Europe it was attached to the British 21st Army Group under Field Marshall Montgomery. They slogged through France,Belgium,Holland and into Germany.
My grama told me that dad was a changed man when he got back. The fun loving,outgoing kid came home quiet and sad. He never was the same.
Dad never talked about the war,he just said it was too rough to bring those memories up. I never heard a single war story from him. Dad died in 2002 taking those terrible memories with him.

[Tyler Durden]

17. Up to the Front.

Once more, for all of us who cannot be at the Cenotaph.

NEXT YEAR.

[CanuckAmok]

19. self-kick.

:kick: