There will be a lot of talk today, from people who were far too young to remember the valour and sacrifices of the Great War and the Global War, about how young people of today aren't up to the task of defending their country like their grandparents and great-grandparents were. Scott Radley of the Hamilton Spectator, interviewing Global War veteran and former Toronto Maple Leaf Stanley Cup winner Gaye Stewart, injects some posionous commentary of his own on that topic today [no link available, website is subscribers-only].
Radley's point was that you wouldn't see today's athletes make the sacrifice to go off to fight for their country (though to be fair, he says that most of the rest of us wouldn't either), that we are too cushioned by our easy lives. Athletes, of course, have always been told that they lead the easy life; since the 19th century they have been paid handsomely for what most perceive as simply playing games. Yet thousands of professional athletes have given up their lives of privilege at the simple call for volunteers. Some never returned.
I think Radley's charge is false, and poisionous, since any careful student of history will tell you that the same has been said at other times, just as gruffly and just as mistakenly, of generations that did traipse off to fight for those who had denigrated them. Perhaps now we are more careful; the Great War's veterans came back with "Never Again" on their lips and the Global War's returnees wished for nothing more than the same thing. Many of us today have absorbed that credo; that there is very little that is worse than sending others off, with a pat or a shove on the back, to kill or be killed. But it does not alter the widespread, nearly universal, belief than when some of us are fighting we all are fighting. The proper way to honour the dead is to honour them for who they were; not to denigrate others for what they are or are not. We owe our veterans everything, and they have always received too little.
I am proud to wear a poppy every November; prouder of my family for having given their all and survived. My grandmother was born when her father (my great-grandfather) was an enlisted man in Flanders; she bears the name Aisne after one of the rivers he had to ford when the Great War was still a fluid combat, before it locked down in entrenched slaughter. She, in turn, bore my father in London in 1944, with V-1 rockets falling all around... there were air raids on the day he was born. My uncle won an MBE for his services during that War; my grandfather served in the Home Guard - as a skilled operator at Pratt & Whitney he was adjudged too valuable to enlist. Instead, he built the engines for the aircraft that won the Battle of Britain. Other members of my family enlisted and fought in the Canadian infantry -- in 1914, in 1939, and in 1950.
Their examples are a light unto me... but we all have relatives who have been forced to make uncomfortable choices by the chaos of war. What we often don't see is that they ARE us... that we are separated by history but not by nature. Take comfort today, as you look around you, that those who wear poppies today would happily, in other times and places, have done what they could for those at the front - including go there themselves, as I would hope I would. Hopefully we would do it without the hypocrisy of white feathers and talk of "ultimate sacrifice" for "the good of the nation".
But first and foremost, let us remember today those without whose valour we would not be here, those who died and those who - by the work of unseen hands - did not die. War was hell; war is hell; war will always be hell. Let us hope that those who have been seared in the fires of those hells, no matter their destination, have found peace.
I run down the trench looking for prisoners. Each man is for himself.
I am alone.
I turn the corner of a bay. My bayonet points forward - on guard.
I proceed cautiously.
Something moves in the corner of the bay. It is a German. I recognize the pot-shaped helmet. In that second he twists and reaches for his revolver.
I lunge forward, aiming at his stomach. It is a lightning, instinctive movement.
The thrust jerks my body. Something heavy collides with the point of my weapon.
I become insane.
I want to strike again and again. My bayonet does not come clear. I pull, tug, jerk. It does not come out.
I have caught him between his ribs. The bones grip my blade. I cannot withdraw.
Of a sudden I hear him shriek. It sounds far-off as though heard in the moment of waking from a dream.
I have a man at the end of my bayonet, I say to myself.
His shrieks become louder and louder.
We are facing each other -- four feet of space separates us.
His eyes are distended; they seem all whites, and look as though they will leap from their sockets.
There is froth in the corners of his mouth which opens and shuts like that of a fish out of water.
His hands grip the barrel of my rifle and he joins me in the effort to withdraw. I do not know what to do.
He looks at me piteously.
I put my foot up against his body and try to kick him off. He shrieks into my face.
He will not come off.
I kick him again and again. No use.
His howling unnerves me. I feel I will go insane if I stay in this hole much longer...
Suddenly I remember what I must do.
I turn around and pull my breech-lock back. The click sounds sharp and clear.
He stops his screaming. He looks at me, silently now.
He knows what I am going to do.
I see his boyish face. He looks like a Saxon; he is fair and under the light I see white down against green cheeks.
I pull my trigger. There is a loud report. The blade at the end of my rifle snaps in two. He falls into the corner of the bay and rolls over. He lies still.
I am free.
-Charles Yale Harrison, Generals Die In Bed.
Please consider leaving Batter's Box behind this morning, and checking out some of these sites:
Canadian War Museum
The Six Books of Rememberance
The War Amps - Canada's Military Heritage
Commonwealth War Graves Commission
The Royal Canadian Legion
National Archives of Canada - War
The Juno Beach Centre
https://www.battersbox.ca/article.php?story=20031111090824999