We Will Remember ThemIn the coming days, our minds will become focused on remembrance yet again. Our media has quite rightly brought before our eyes once more the awful conflicts and lives lost in the battlefields of the past. Unfortunately, also our ever present military activities of the hour.
- It was exactly 90 years ago, November 11th, 1918, that the guns of August, 1914, fell silent and we began counting the cost of the “war to end all wars”. Quite considerable, indeed. Worth looking at again: 65 million persons were armed, and 10 million died.
- 619,636 Canadians were members of the forces. One in ten never returned.
- The RCN had only ten ships at the time. They served as well as they could.
- 25,000 personnel served in the growing British air service/force with salutary contribution by pilots & ground crew.
- 3,846 became prisoners; 3,748 returned.
Such are the closing statistics. Nearly every community in Canada bore its grief as a terrible pall. It is astonishing how many descendants of the fallen have kept true to the memory of those heroes of 1918. Ninety years of remembrance. May we all never fail in the regard for their loss. The blood red poppy of Flanders made indelible by Col. John MacRae is surely the noblest of emblems.
Speaking of Flanders fields poetry, one down to earth parody on a song of the day was:
Sing me to sleep where the bullets fall;
Let me forget the war and all.
Damp is my dugout, cold are my feet,
Nothing but bully and biscuit to eat.
Sing me to sleep where bombs explode
And shrapnel shells are รก la-mode.
Over the sandbag helmets you find
Corpses in front of you, corpses behind.
Far, far from Ypres I long to be,
Where German snipers can’t pot me.
Think of me crouching where the worms creep,
Waiting for someone to sing me to sleep.
A cross-Canada project by Canada’s National History Society raised money and financed a visual display vigil showing the names of all the fallen and displayed for 30 seconds on a projected moving scroll, with 8 seconds ‘still’ for each name. It was opened for the first time by H.M. Queen Elizabeth, in London, projected on the wall of Canada House (Trafalgar Square). It came to Halifax November 5th. It was shown on the walls of St. Paul’s Anglican church, Halifax. Former premier, John Hamm, presided.
In Port Hawkesbury, our Cenotaph Veteran’s Park is pretty well completed. Benches are now fully installed with commemorative plaques placed by family members.
The new Flagpole at the monument will be dedicated on Remembrance Day. It bears the commemoration to Dr. V. Gudzdiol, well-known family physician of the town, an allied Naval Officer & Prisoner of War during WWII. His widow, Mrs. Gudzdiol endowed this memorial.
We recall today, also those who paid the supreme sacrifice of WWII And Korea. Let us not overlook the Peacekeepers who have also gone to their eternal rest in the quest of Peace.
Let me end this article with an exhortation that has almost become a cliche: “Support our troops”. I was inclined to list the casualties of our commitments abroad here, but I thought that maybe I should ask you all to visit the Legion building. There you will find a tree, hung Christmas style, with the photos of all our heroes who lost there lives in Afgahnistan and elsewhere in recent years.
Lord God of Hosts be with us yet, Lest we forget, Lest we forget.
Wear the Poppy & Remember.
Bill Charlton, Chaplain,
Branch 43, RCL, Port Hawkesbury.
